Throughout his life, Ben-Zion Meir Hai Ouziel (1880-1953), the first Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel, held fast to a vision of breaking down the divisions among Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Jews from other lands. Daniel Bouskila writes:

[D]espite holding an official title and position that seems to have ethnic and particularistic overtones, Ouziel was an outspoken proponent of Jewish unity. He passionately sought to abolish the traditional ethnic divisions among Jews, especially in Israel. His push for Jewish unity was persistent and thorough, and he articulated his vision of Jewish unity in many forums, including public addresses, written position papers, and halakhic rulings. . . .

Fully aware of the 1,900-year history in which Jews lived as separate and distinct communities throughout the Diaspora—with different rabbis, customs, languages, prayer rituals, and halakhic rulings—Ouziel nonetheless believed that unifying the Jewish people “should not be a difficult task” because the divisions born in the Diaspora were alien to the essence of the Jewish people. He did not consider his desire to abolish the Diaspora’s divisions into Sephardim and Ashkenazim to be a new or radical idea, but a return to [the Jews’] true nature.

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.