The Hebrew word for “freedom,” ḥerut, appears prominently in the Passover liturgy and in the Haggadah, but nowhere in the Bible. Nor do equivalent biblical Hebrew terms occur anywhere in the Bible’s telling of the Exodus story. To resolve this paradox, Yehoshua Pfeffer argues that the Torah does not view the purpose of redemption from Egyptian bondage to be liberation, but rather the actualization of the covenant between God and Israel:

[I]n the Jewish tradition, liberty is not presented as an independent value, but rather as a crucial means by which to achieve an ultimate end. This end is not the freedom to choose, but the choice of forming relationships with others—relationships that involve duty, responsibility, and fidelity. The relationship, with all it entails, is the end. Freedom is merely the means.

The Torah [seeks to create] elevated relationships—first and foremost between each person and God, but also relationships between a person and his family, friends, and acquaintances. The greatest principle of the Torah, stated Rabbi Akiva, is that of “love your fellow as yourself.” A necessary precondition for fulfilling this principle is liberty; a coerced relationship cannot be classified as a relationship, let alone one of love. The end, however, is the relationship rather than the liberty.

Before the Jews entered into their relationship with God, they first had to be redeemed from Egyptian bondage and oppression. Somebody who lives under an external yoke cannot make a covenant with others; he cannot commit himself to the duties and fidelity that true relationships demand, for his duty and fidelity are not his to allocate. The Talmud states in this spirit that a slave cannot fully enter into matrimony; . . . he lacks the most basic tool required for human relationships.

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.