A recent study by the Pew Research Center noted a sizable increase in the number of Americans identifying themselves as “religiously unaffiliated,” a group dubbed the “Nones.” Looking carefully at the available data, Peter Berger notes that the Nones are a very diverse group, not at all congruent with the secular or irreligious; 68 percent of them say they believe in a deity, and 18 percent consider themselves religious. Berger comments:

One [solution] would be to differentiate the “Nones” from the “Buts”—that is, from those who will say something like “I am Catholic, but . . . ,” this preamble then being followed by a list of items where the respondent cannot accept the teachings or the actions of his church. There are very many such people in most religious communities today. They fit into the first of two categories based on the work of the distinguished British sociologist Grace Davie—“belonging without believing”—that is individuals who do not disaffiliate from their religious community, thus cannot be called “Nones,” but do stay in with a degree of dissent or inner distance. The other category, “believing without belonging,” does fit the description of “Nones”—they form the very large group of unorganized practitioners of Asian meditation techniques or informal charismatic gatherings, and of course individuals who construct their religious idiosyncrasies all by themselves. . . .

What we have here is a religious landscape that is highly diverse, colorful, and volatile. It is the result of the combination of pluralism (the coexistence of different religions, worldviews, and value systems in the same society) and religious freedom (where the state refrains from imposing or re-imposing religious or ideological uniformity). . . . [W]e don’t live in a secular age, but in a pluralist age.

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.