From its 2013 survey of American Jewry, the Pew Foundation has released newly analyzed data pertaining specifically to the Orthodox population. Pew notes the rapid growth of Orthodox Jewry relative to the overall American Jewish population, and the rapid growth of the ultra-Orthodox relative to the overall Orthodox population. It also finds that American Orthodox Jews are increasingly leaning to the political right. David Bernstein comments on what this means about the way Jews relate to both Israel and America:

[A]mong the non-Orthodox Jewish population, the percentage who don’t practice the religion and don’t meaningfully affiliate with the community is growing. The population of active Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Jews is shrinking, especially among the young. It is . . . among the former unaffiliated group that lack of interest or hostility to Israel is concentrated. When you hear . . . that young Jews are increasingly disaffected from Israel, it’s not only inaccurate, but refers mainly to [these] secular individuals with overwhelmingly left-wing politics, not raised in the Jewish religion, who still consider themselves at least partially Jewish.

Given the likely demographic future of this group—bluntly, it’s destined to have few Jewish descendants—relative to the broader Jewish community, the upshot is that the American Jewish population, with the exception of the large anti-Zionist Satmar ḥasidic sect, over time will grow increasingly close to, not distant from, Israel. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this is happening already. . . .

[Furthermore], theological, social, and even economic conservatism is going to become an increasingly important element of American Jewish life. . . . For what it’s worth, I almost never saw a kippah at conservative or libertarian political or intellectual events twenty years ago, but I see them all the time today, for example, at Federalist Society events. So not only are Orthodox Jews a growing right-leaning demographic, they appear to be getting more involved in general American political culture.

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.