Two weeks ago, a group of over 70 prominent Britons signed a letter urging Prime Minister Boris Johnson to conduct a government inquiry into the fact that people of African, Caribbean, and South Asian descent are dying of the coronavirus at a higher rate than whites. But the letter makes no mention of another group disproportionately affected by the pandemic, writes Eliyahu Lann:

Despite being 0.3 percent of the total population, the latest reports state that Jews make up 2.1 percent of COVID-19 fatalities, [i.e., they] are over four times more likely to die of COVID-19 than the general public. There are explanations similar to those [explaining the death rates of other minorities]. Three out of five Jews live in London, the epicenter of the pandemic. Twenty-one percent of Jews are aged sixty-five and above, compared to 16 percent of the general public. However, Jews are healthier than the general population and are less likely to be impacted economically than black African or Caribbean people, as over a third are self-employed.

Studies such as “Evidence Mounts on the Disproportionate Effect of COVID-19 on Ethnic Minorities” in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine and “Are Some Ethnic Groups More Vulnerable to COVID-19 Than Others?” in the IFS Deaton Review, have neglected the British Jewish community as they fail to mention how [its members] are contracting COVID-19 at the same rate or higher than those of other minority communities.

The medical negligence from researchers, UK media organizations, and the UK government fail to inform accurately the wider British public and the Jewish community on the effects of COVID-19.

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.