Abraham Twerski, a ḥasidic rabbi, has made his career as a psychiatrist specializing in treating addiction. He is also devoted reader of the popular comic strip Peanuts, which he frequently cites while working with patients and in his numerous books on Jewish topics. Eventually he developed a friendship with Charles Schulz, the comic’s creator. Aaron R. Katz writes:

During [their first] meeting, Schulz asked Twerski if he could pose a theological question, a proposal in which Twerski, of course, acquiesced. Schulz proceeded to ask Twerski for his thoughts on theodicy, the question of “why bad things happen to good people.” Twerski responded by noting that this question has its roots in the Bible, and even Moses asked and failed to receive an answer.

Remarkably, Twerski told Schulz that one response to the question of theodicy is in fact found in a Peanuts strip. When Schulz asked which strip, Twerski responded by reminding Schulz of a Peanuts strip from 1959: in it, Linus is seen laboring to build a very intricate sand castle. Suddenly, it begins to drizzle and before long, the sand castle is wiped away by the torrential rain. Linus then says to himself: “There’s a lesson to be learned here somewhere, but I don’t know what it is . . .” Twerski, despite being well versed in matters of Jewish theology, admitted that he found Linus’s statement to be a profound response to the age-old question.

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.