In what seems like a real-life version of the classic film Chariots of Fire, the Sabbath-observant Israeli runner Beatie Deutsch faces a predicament regarding the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. Nathan Lewin explains:

[T]he marathons—initially slated for a Sunday in 2020—are now rescheduled for a Saturday in 2021. [Deutsch] is an award-winning marathon runner who competes in a skirt, headscarf, and elbow-length sleeves. She won the Life-Time Miami women’s half-marathon in February 2020. She will probably represent Israel in the Tokyo event, but she will be able to run only if the race is not held on Shabbat.

[Since] the age of sports stars’ political neutrality is gone, [now] is the opportunity for the American marathon team . . . to emulate the basketball and baseball all-stars [protesting for social justice]. They and other American competitors in the Olympics should notify the Japanese Olympic officials that they will race only if no religious barrier is imposed that might cast a shadow over the fairness of the contest.

The American runners who have qualified to run in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics surely do not want potential triumphs to be marred by the disqualification of a runner who can’t compete because the adjusted schedule—moving the marathon from Sunday to Saturday—made it impossible for her to race. They can, and should, forcefully communicate this message to the Tokyo organizers.

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.