While Iberian and North African rabbis of the Middle Ages—like Abraham ibn Ezra, Moses Maimonides, and Moses Naḥmanides—read non-Jewish languages and had advanced secular educations, their counterparts in Germany and northern France did not. The great French exegete Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes (1040-1105), better known as Rashi, thus cites exclusively Jewish sources in his highly influential commentaries. But, writes Warren Zev Harvey, he “was well-versed in the surrounding Christian culture, and had connections with Christian scholars.” Harvey argues that it is quite likely that Rashi actually drew on Plato’s Timaeus in his exegesis of the opening verse of Genesis, and notes many parallels:

In 11th-century Christian Europe, the Timaeus was a popular book among the Scholastics (i.e., Christian theologians). It was, in fact, the only Platonic work then available in Latin. It was read in the translation of Calcidius (ca. 321), which included only the [dialogue’s] first part, and was studied with his commentary.

It is not known if Calcidius was Christian or pagan, but his commentary contains a comparison of the account of creation in the Timaeus with that in Genesis, which he calls Moses’ De Genitura Mundi. . . . Medieval Christian theologians used Plato’s Timaeus as an aid in interpreting the creation narrative in the book of Genesis. If Rashi was interested in the Timaeus, it was very likely for exegetical reasons, not philosophical ones.

Rashi could have read Calcidius’ translation, if his Latin was good enough; or he could have read quotations from it in popular Christian theological literature in Old French; or he could have received oral reports on its doctrine from Christian colleagues.

Much like Plato, Harvey points out, Rashi believed that “the world was created from primordial material” and “the four physical elements, earth, water, air, and fire, were all in existence before the creation of the world.” Furthermore, while Plato “identified the primordial [materials] with letters, Rashi identified them with the letters of the Torah and of the divine name.”

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.