In their efforts to treat those suffering from COVID-19, doctors have been experimenting with injecting those with severe cases of the disease with the blood plasma of those who are convalescing. The antibodies contained in the plasma are thought to help patients fight the infection. The logistics of this simple treatment are in fact quite complex: suitable and willing donors must be found; the machines needed to extract the plasma do not exist in abundance; the process itself takes over an hour; and the plasma must be transported to those most in need. At the forefront of surmounting these difficulties in the U.S. are a group of Ḥasidim, who began their efforts when one of their own was ill and no plasma was available—but did not stop there. Yonoson Rosenblum reports:

Michael Joyner, [a physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, tasked by the FDA with leading experimentation with plasma treatment], early on came to view the ḥaredi community as a major ally. Because this community was so hard hit by the COVID-19 virus, it constituted a huge reservoir of potential donors. In addition, he understood the community’s ability to mobilize once it identifies a goal.

On [one] occasion, Dr. Joyner called Chaim Lebovits, [the ḥasidic shoe merchant involved in coordinating plasma donations], on a Friday and told him that he needed eleven donors in Brooklyn, Minnesota before the weekend. Lebovits, who wasn’t previously aware of the existence of a Brooklyn in Minnesota, reached out to his connections in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. An hour before the Sabbath began eleven Ḥasidim showed up at the blood center in Brooklyn.

Within two weeks, approximately 5,000 recovered coronavirus victims have signed up. . . . The existing donors are already sufficient to cover every current slot for donations.

In addition, [these] efforts have already had an impact in Israel. Lebovits relates with relish the discussion in his conference call with Joyner, Shmuel Shoham [an Israeli-born physician at Johns Hopkins University working with Lebovits], and senior Magen David Adom (MDA) official in Israel. The MDA official’s main question was, “Where do you find the donors?” Shoham answered him in . . . Hebrew: “What’s your problem? Do what we did! Get the Ḥasidim. You have plenty of Ḥasidim.” The next day, the MDA official called back to say that they had successfully followed Shoham’s advice.

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.