The recently released documentary One of Us tells the stories of three American Jews who left their ḥasidic communities. Although he expected the film to be an “over-the-top hatchet job,” Yitzchok Adlerstein, an Orthodox rabbi, found that it managed to shine a favorable light not only on its subjects but also on the communities they left. And, he concludes, it rightly raises some troubling questions:

The filmmakers could have gone for the jugular. They didn’t. They admit that the vast majority of the [ḥasidic] community is happy, and shares a supportive communal life that so many others don’t have. The visuals of the Ḥasidim back up that contention: lots of smiling husbands and wives. . . . Despite the searing criticism of the way those who move away from the demands of the community are treated, the film shows Ḥasidim who continue to accept the [defectors] as human beings, maintain old friendships, and offer heartfelt guidance. . . .

Watching [the film, however], was extremely painful.

First and foremost, it was painful because two out of the three Jews who are followed claim to be victims of abuse. One is a mother of seven children who was abused for years by her husband, and is now being abused by a combination of the New York legal system and the determination of [her] community not to allow children to have a relationship with a mother whose practice no longer accords with its expectations of proper religious education. The other is a young man who was abused in a summer camp. In both cases, the attitude of the community was to deny the abuse, refuse to act against it, and punish anyone who would go to the authorities for help. . . .

It was painful to watch as one of the men goes to an avuncular mentor figure in his own community to explain his decision [to defect]. The young man talks about all of his unanswered questions about God. He avers that if someone had been willing to give him answers, he would still be in the community. The mentor is left almost speechless. The best [answer] he can up with is that Ḥasidim don’t deal with whys and wherefores (he claims), but only with how to lead one’s life. He seems entirely incapable of offering even elementary explanations to common questions about Orthodox Jewish life. It was painful to watch because it is not only in [the heavily ḥasidic Brooklyn neighborhood of] Williamsburg that . . . children find their questions suppressed, or are given insufficient or silly answers: much of [the Orthodox] world refuses to take these questions seriously.

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.