According to Leo Strauss, the Hebrew Bible stands in “radical opposition” to philosophy. Strauss bases this argument on the contention that philosophy began when the ancient Greeks discovered “nature”—i.e., that which is unchanging and universal—as distinct from mere custom, and hence the idea that there exist universal definitions of truth and goodness. By contrast, he claims that Jewish scripture maintains the pre-philosophical view that everything is governed by custom. Yoram Hazony contends that even if Strauss’s definition of philosophy is correct, the Hebrew Bible should in fact be studied as the very beginning of the Western philosophical tradition:

[T]he decisive move that turned ancient Israelite thought into a force in the history of ideas was the discovery that there is only one God, who is the creator of all things in heaven and earth. But although this fact is well known, its meaning . . . is not well understood today. In the ancient world, . . . [there] were gods for each nation, gods of weather and agriculture and fertility and war, and more localized gods such the god of the apple harvest or the god of a given field. Each of these gods was understood as making normative demands upon human beings in the area of its own competence. If a man or a woman wanted something from the god that lorded over a particular nation or place or activity, then finding a way of pleasing the relevant god was of the utmost significance.

In other words, the gods of the ancient world were each of them recognized as promulgating a local standard of right that governed, or held good for, certain peoples or places or activities. . . .

In practice, the system of thought known from the nations of the ancient world—paganism—amounted to the localization of what was considered true or good. As Strauss observes, what the god of any given place might endorse or demand could easily be different from what was demanded by another, neighboring god. In other words, an understanding of the world as being governed by many gods amounted to the recognition of numerous different standards for determining what is true and good, with each god asserting its own standard, different from the others.

By contrast, the [biblical] discovery that the world was governed by one God was the discovery that there is only one normative order, only one standard for judging what is true and good. As such, this one standard had to be independent of all local standards, and consequently, of the claims that were otherwise being made in the name of ancestry, authority, and custom in any given place.

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.