Commenting on the high numbers of physical attacks on visibly Orthodox Jews— most of which have taken place in ḥasidic areas of Brooklyn—and on the relative indifference of the media and local government, Abe Greenwald writes:

Jews are historically targeted as representatives of whatever group a society most loathes at a given moment. . . . If you want to know what a culture considers most problematic, look at its brand of anti-Semitism. When you have headlines about “white privilege” and “evil white men,” Jews become the epitome of whiteness.

We see this in the recent notion that Jews are perceived as “hyper-white,” according to Mark Winston Griffith from the Black Movement Center. It’s also evident in intersectionality theory—a leftist ranking system of identity grievance that deems Jews essentially too powerful to be a minority worthy of social-justice empathy.

The idea that Jews are a rich, powerful, turbo-white elite is also reflected in the messaging of the country’s most celebrated progressive politicians. Taken as a whole, the [so-called] Democratic Squad’s theory of American villainy says that the United States is racist, greedy, war-mongering, and cruel—and its politics are corrupted by Jewish money. Those who promote collective grievance often make their way around to blaming the Jews. In an age of sanctified victimhood, it’s not so surprising to see a rise in anti-Semitic violence and a lack of interest in doing anything about it.

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.