Turning on her phone after a trans-Atlantic flight, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt found that several friends had alerted her to a Twitter account purportedly belonging to a David Goldberg and filled with anti-Israel propaganda. As a profile picture, the account’s owner had used a photograph of Chizhik-Goldschmidt’s husband—a Jerusalem-born rabbi. This case of photographic identity theft appears to be part of a larger pattern, possibly organized on the online forum 4chan, which attracts neo-Nazis, pornographers, and cybercriminals:

“We must create a massive movement of fake Jewish profiles on Facebook, Twitter, etc.,” an anonymous [4chan] user posted. “Since Jews shapeshift into whites anytime they want, we can do the same to them.” A slew of profiles began to appear on social media, most posing as Orthodox Jews promoting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content. In other words, these [accounts] with fringe views were created with the express purpose of stoking ferocious fighting within the Jewish community by highlighting its most sensitive topics: Israel, Donald Trump, and anti-Zionist Jews.

The 4chan user behind the movement made this entirely clear: the intention, he wrote, was to “subvert Jews themselves.” His goal was to “create infighting as righty Jews will accuse lefty Jews of being fake profiles. This creates more division.” The post advised readers how best to stir the pot: “You also have the benefit of labeling anyone an anti-Semite who disagrees with you. Use this to your advantage.”

Those who seek to exploit this tension seek to turn the American Jewish community against itself. They threaten to damage, permanently, the communal consensus that fostered the emerging state of Israel in 1948, as Jews worldwide rallied for the right to a homeland in the wake of the Holocaust. . . . It is on us not to give them the pleasure.

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.