This week’s Torah reading contains a perplexing passage that has led to endless debate among commentators. The Israelites, wandering in the wilderness, complain to Moses and Aaron because there is no water. God tells Moses to command a rock to bring forth water. Denouncing the people as rebels, Moses strikes the rock twice, water gushes out, and the people quench their thirst. God then informs Moses and Aaron that “because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.” But for what, exactly, are Moses and Aaron being punished? Marc Angel ventures his own explanation:

The Midrash connects the death of Miriam, [which occurs in the verse immediately before this episode], with the lack of water. As long as she was alive, her merit was so great that a well miraculously accompanied the people. Once she died, that well ceased to give water and the people therefore became thirsty. . . . She was a key leader of Israel and was gifted with prophecy.

Yet, when she died, the Torah tersely reports that she was buried. There is no mention of the Israelites mourning her death. (By contrast, after the deaths of Aaron and Moses, the Torah indicates a national 30-day mourning period.) Not only did the people not seem to appreciate the lifelong service of Miriam, they are not reported as having offered any words of consolation to her brothers, Moses and Aaron. The people didn’t seem to care much about Miriam’s passing, and did not seem to associate her virtue with the existence of the water well that had accompanied them in the wilderness. The people were thirsty; they were not concerned about the death of Miriam or the grief of Moses and Aaron.

When the Israelites complained, then, Moses and Aaron were deeply disappointed and pained. Not only should the people have had more faith in God, Who had been providing for them throughout their years in the wilderness; the people should have shown appreciation to Miriam! How could they be so callous? . . .

When Moses and Aaron assembled the people to bring forth water from the rock, they were not in a calm state of mind. . . . Moses . . . lashed out at the people, calling them rebels. He smote the rock rather than speaking to it. Moses let his anger get the best of him. Aaron, as Moses’ accomplice in this episode, apparently shared Moses’ feelings and concurred with his words and actions. So this was the great “sin” of Moses and Aaron: letting their personal grief and frustration overtake their reason and sense of responsibility to the people.

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.