Asked at a press conference on Tuesday about Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib’s and Ilhan Omar’s most recent display of anti-Israel vitriol, President Trump responded that “Jewish people that vote for a Democrat—I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” David Wolpe comments:

It is the mark of a well-managed mind that one can hold principles that are independent of the people who espouse them. So it is possible to believe, simultaneously, in the following: (1) the move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was both necessary and overdue; (2) some of the statements of Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and some of the organizations and individuals who support them are anti-Semitic; (3) the president’s statement . . . is both foolish and dangerous.

The accusation of disloyalty has a long history in the Jewish experience. Those who have hated Jews, from the biblical stories of Egypt onward, have catalyzed their nefarious plans by declaring the disloyalty of Jews to whatever country they inhabit. In Germany, despite having fought for the country in World War I, Jews were [during the 1930s] treated like a cabal of traitorous outsiders. That trope is one of the most reliable ways to mobilize anti-Jewish sentiment. In this paranoid, delusional world, Jews are not native—they are interlopers and disloyal ones at that.

[T]he danger of accusing Jews of disloyalty—since over 70 percent of Jews vote Democratic, wisely or not—cannot be remedied by other aspects of his presidency that Jews find congenial or praiseworthy. . . . The president should have the maturity and graciousness to admit he ought never have suggested that Jews are disloyal to their country or their tradition. That is not a judgment for a president [to make].

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.