The sprawling nature of the Talmud, where discussion of one topic leads seamlessly to another, sometimes with only the loosest of connections, has invited comparison with the Internet, where a reader can follow one link after another to roam farther and farther afield from the subject with which he or she began. But the comparison only goes so far, writes Gil Student:

While there is some truth to this abstract comparison, [the differences] deserve our attention as well. [The Talmud] begins with page 2a of Tractate Brakhot and continues for 2,711 pages until it concludes with Nidah 73a. Of course, you can start anywhere in the middle, particularly at the beginning of any of the 37 tractates. But it has a discrete beginning and end. . . . By contrast, the Internet has no entrance or exit. Every article contains links to many others. Every person has his own beginning and only stops when other concerns beckon.

[In studying the Talmud], we study the text, perhaps with additional tools when available, but always remaining on, or at least returning to, the page. The Internet, [by contrast], has no anchor, sending you across the globe with endless links.

Finally, notes Student, while the Internet encourages social isolation, the Talmud is customarily studied communally—with a study partner, or in a class, or even individually in the public space of the synagogue or study hall.

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.