One of the latest targets of obsessive Israel-haters has been J.K. Rowling, the author of the wildly successful Harry Potter books, who has become a vocal critic of the endemic anti-Semitism of Britain’s Labor party. Chiming in, a representative of a group called Jews for Racial and Economic Justice accused Rowling of trying to make up for the “viciously antisemetic [sic] scenes in [her books] that destroyed Jewish kids” with “right-wing Netanyahu talking points.” Liel Leibovitz comments:

Just what sort of wicked deeds did the beloved author commit to warrant the accusation of destroying Jewish children, a charge previously limited to, say, the Nazi Einsatzgruppen? . . . In the Harry Potter universe, the banks are controlled by goblins, and the chief goblin is called Griphook. Get it? Grip, because he has a tight grip on money, and hook because he has a hooked nose! Which means he’s a Jew! Which makes J.K. Rowling some sort of slightly more feminine Goebbels!

In their well-scrubbed moments, the boycotters insist that singling out the world’s only Jewish state for opprobrium even though—or even because—it’s a pluralistic democracy has nothing to do with Jews. You can, they insist, be an anti-Zionist and not an anti-Semite. L’affaire Rowling proves yet again that you can’t: the author had nothing to say about Israel. Her concern was the hatred of Jews in Britain, a hatred the community itself has unanimously and unequivocally characterized as a clear and present threat. And for that the boycott-divest-and-sanction lowlifes pounced, arguing that anyone who bravely stands with Jews and speaks out against anti-Semitism must be some sort of bigoted emissary of the dark King Bibi himself.

Previously, this sort of reasoning was reserved to those who dwelled in padded cells and spent their days lining up for meds. But now we have Twitter, where such mad drivel can pass for sophistication. But hey, it’s the holidays, time to be kind and compassionate to each other. So in the spirit of brotherly love, if you believe that singling out the world’s only Jewish state for harsh criticism is totally not anti-Semitic but criticizing [Labor’s leader Jeremy Corbyn], who declared Hamas and Hizballah his friends, truly is, I hope you get all the help you need.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.