The prayer Aleinu, originally written as part of the High Holy Day liturgy, later became a mainstay of the daily service. The first half emphasizes the uniqueness of the Jewish people’s connection to God and the falsehood of other religions. The second half, however, depicts an eschatological future in which the whole world unites to worship God. Reuven Kimelman explores the tensions between the prayer’s particularism and its universalism:

Unlike most Jewish visions of the future, Aleinu is not restorative, looking to revive an ideal past; rather, it is utopian, looking to establish an ideal future. Although every knee bends to God, this is not under the threat of Jewish swords. In other words, Aleinu does not envision the Judaization of the world. Instead, it seeks the monotheization and ethicization (“to turn to You all the wicked of the earth”) of all humanity. It looks forward to the acceptance of God’s sovereignty by all humanity, which is synonymous—in Aleinu’s thinking—with the uprooting of evil.

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.