In a recent speech on behalf of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, the anti-Semitic activist Linda Sarsour declared that “at a time of startling rise in white nationalism and anti-Semitism, I would be so proud to win [the election], but also to make history and elect the first Jewish American president.” Jonathan Tobin comments on the Sanders’ decision to make Sarsour one of his official surrogates:

Sanders . . . is in a fierce competition with Elizabeth Warren and a number of other Democratic contenders for the votes of the party’s left-wing base, which united behind him in opposition to Hillary Clinton four years ago. So it says something important about the tone of the nomination battle that Sanders and his team think that Sarsour will help him more than her baggage will hurt him.

Sarsour and her apologists on the Jewish left claim that she is misunderstood, pointing to gestures like her fundraising to help vandalized Jewish cemeteries even if it is unclear how much, if any, help she has actually given to such causes. They will repeat this line by citing her statement supporting Sanders, in which she spoke of her pride in helping elect a Jew and opposition to anti-Semitism. But Sarsour’s ideas about what constitutes anti-Semitism have nothing to do with the reality of left-wing hatred of Jews and everything to do with the attempt by some to [use concerns over anti-Semitism] against President Trump.

Does Sanders think his Jewish origins give him a pass for employing someone who not only works for Israel’s destruction but has also done much to promote anti-Semitic invective? Jewish or not, he and his trumpeting of Sarsour as a key member of his campaign—who would likely think herself entitled to a significant administration job if he won—makes history in a way that ought to make Jews shudder.

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.