In 1555, Pope Paul IV ordered Jews to be confined to separate, closed-off neighborhoods. Soon ghettos appeared in cities throughout Italy, including Rome, where Jews were forced to live within the walls until the French Revolution. Italian archivist Giancarlo Spizzichino recently discovered the existence of a second ghetto, known as Ghettarello, in Rome. The Holy See closed it down in 1735—in an outburst not of tolerance but of intolerance, as Micol Debash writes:

The Papal State had a number of reasons to close the Ghettarello. For one, it was under financial stress, which could be partially alleviated by selling the ghetto buildings. Also, the Pope needed to fight against the tendencies of the Enlightenment, where an appeal to reason was favored over faith. Anti-Jewish regulation and legislation were starting to be repealed: the Pope . . . felt threatened by these changes and for his part became even more severe. . . . “Closing the Ghettarello was one of the many acts of the Papal State to put pressure on the Jews in order to force them to give up on their religion and identity,” explained Spizzichino.

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.