Ahavat Yisrael­—love of the Jewish people—is considered by the rabbinic tradition a hallmark of piety. But after giving a Rosh Hashanah sermon on the topic, Rabbi David Wolpe was told that younger congregants found his remarks “elitist and distasteful.” He responds:

Had an Irishman said he loved all the Irish, or an Albanian said she loved all Albanians, my guess is these people would have found it an endearing expression of national pride. Loving and embracing your people of origin is not to hate or look down on others; it is an affirmation made daily by members of almost every group—religious, ethnic, cultural, and national.

Jews, for all their supposed “tribalism,” are deeply universalist. . . . [O]ur new year celebrates not the beginning of Judaism but the beginning of the world. Unlike classical Christianity, Judaism insists that one has to be righteous, not Jewish, to attain eternal life. And atop the most universal institution in the world, the United Nations, there is a quote from Isaiah, a Jewish prophet.

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.