On Saturday, a group of “yellow-vest” protestors in Paris recognized the philosopher and public intellectual Alain Finkielkraut and turned on him, yelling anti-Semitic epithets. Finkielkraut, who has never hesitated to identify himself as a Jew and a Zionist, has from its inception supported the yellow-vest movement’s criticism of Emmanuel Macron’s economic policies. But this was not the first or only instance of anti-Semitism in the movement—and elsewhere in Europe. Daniel Johnson comments:

As many as 44 percent of self-identified “yellow vests” believe that the world is ruled by Zionists. They see Macron as a puppet of his former employer, the Rothschild bank. Some 22 percent of the French public as a whole agrees with them. . . .

[A]ll over Europe, Jews repeatedly tell pollsters that they are experiencing anti-Semitism as a fact of everyday life. Many are considering emigration to Israel or the United States. None feels safe on a continent with a fast-growing Muslim population, many of whom have imported hostile attitudes toward Jews from their countries of origin. The problem, though, goes wider and deeper. Finkielkraut is among those to have criticized the European establishment for its craven attitude toward Islamists and its betrayal of Israel.

What is to be done? Clearly, Europe has done a lousy job of educating young people, whatever their origins. But we are also confused about how to go about this task. A distinguished Jewish academic in America recently told me that the constant reiteration of images of the Holocaust, reinforced by school visits to camps, museums, and memorials, might be counterproductive. “I don’t want people to be indoctrinated with the idea that the Jews can all be killed,” she said. “I want them to see that we are normal people, that Israel is a normal country, that Jews are neither victims nor manipulators, but just like everyone else.”

She has a point. It is essential that Europeans learn about the Holocaust, yet it is not enough. They also need to learn how Jews have survived and flourished since. And that means accepting and, yes, embracing the state of Israel as the Jewish homeland promised by the Balfour Declaration a century ago. A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of anti-Semitism. Unless it is exorcised, it will destroy us.

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.