Today is the minor Jewish holiday of Tu b’Shvat, or the “new year of the trees.” Having originated as a financial deadline on the ancient calendar of tithe-collection, it has, over the years—particularly in the hands of 17th-century Jewish mystics—morphed into a more general celebration of trees and their fruit. Alan Zelenetz explains why these plants deserve special consideration (2014):

[The book of Deuteronomy] offers one of the most celebrated examples of the Torah’s ethical and ecological sensitivity, “Do not destroy [fruit-bearing] trees by wielding an ax against them, for from them you will eat, do not cut them down.” Based on this proscription, Judaism derives an overriding moral principle known as bal tashḥit, prohibiting any random destruction or wanton waste in all walks of life. . . .

[The] Jewish love affair with fruit, flower, and foliage has, indeed, been an eternal one. We can already discern the strains of a love song in talmudic times when the sages teach how to bless the trees “who” share our lives: “Tree, O tree, with what should I bless you? Your fruit is already sweet. Your shade is plentiful. . . . May it be God’s will that all the trees planted from your seeds be like you.” . . .

[I]n Jewish thought and practice a tree is no simple metaphor. The trees of Tu b’Shvat are at the essence of our understanding the interrelatedness of God’s world. The Torah, in fact, makes the comparison over and over. In both the book of Psalms and the Talmud we find fruit trees and cedars breaking into songs of praise for God. And the prophet Isaiah declares explicitly, “For as the days of a tree shall be the days of My 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.