Benefiting from Tunisian government protection, the Jews of Djerba, who trace their history to the time of the First Temple, have held fast to their traditional way of life. Women marry young, have large families, and often receive only rudimentary education. Now, however, some are trying to change that. Lucette Lagnado writes:

Ancient traditions guide every aspect of Djerban Jewish life, but modernity is slowly encroaching. Laptops, iPhones, and TV sets are ubiquitous. Perhaps the biggest question mark revolves around the role of women in society. Largely absent from the workforce, Djerba’s Jewish women generally are expected to lead traditional lives tending to husbands and families. . . .

Youssef Wazan, the president of the community, argues that Djerban Jews have done better than other [Arabic-speaking] Jews precisely because they have fought against the lure of modern times—including assimilation and the changing role of women. “Listen, the Jews in [mainland] Tunisia . . . had their freedoms…and they all left,” he says. “Our synagogues are full every day and on the Sabbath, we don’t work—nothing. If you look at France you don’t see that even on Yom Kippur. That is why we don’t want modernity.”

And yet, at the fringes of society and in subtle ways, Djerban women are evolving. Two agents of change are the cousins Alite and Hanna Sabban, who have fought to bring greater educational opportunities to the girls of Djerba.

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.