One of the four species of plant that are ritually waved on the holiday of Sukkot, the etrog (citron) often has a small protrusion, known in Hebrew as a pitom, on the side opposite the stem. Some rabbinic authorities prize an etrog with a pitom; others maintain that an etrog without one is preferable. Among East European Jews, the feature was bound up with various folkways and superstitions, which in turn became fodder for Yiddish writers, as Rokhl Kafrissen explains:

Ashkenazi folk magic attached great significance to the power of the pitom. A woman could ensure that she would have a son if she bit off the pitom. The pitom placed under a pillow ensured an easy labor. That labor could also be eased by a special etrog preserve.

The power of the pitom nearly tears two brothers apart in [the popular early-20th-century Yiddish and Hebrew writer] Zalman Shneur’s short story “Opgebisn dem pitom” (With the Pitom Bitten Off). The brothers jointly own an etrog that gets passed between the households. But this year, each brother has a pregnant woman in his house and each is demanding the rights to the etrog. The women believe the pitom even has the power to change a baby girl to a baby boy in the womb. The stakes are high.

One of the women is desperate for a son and cannot wait. She bites off the pitom before any kind of agreement can be reached. This causes great strife, and comedy, between the two families. The other pregnant woman, Reyzl, then takes possession of the pitom-less etrog. Her mother-in-law consoles her, and begins preparations for turning it into preserves. At this point, the dignified etrog becomes the much more [quaint and domesticated] esregl. The males of the household crowd around, [yearning] for a taste of its golden jam. But once transformed in the service of feminine magic, the etrog is strictly off limits to men.

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.