Few biblical books have engendered as much analysis or philosophical discussion as the story of Job. A recent “biography” of the title character, by Mark Larrimore, examines the various interpretations to which he and his experience have been subjected, from the apocryphal Testament of Job to Elie Wiesel. Shalom Carmy reviews Larrimore’s book and highlights some of its shortcomings:

In particular, there is no space [in this treatment] for either analytic philosophy or the traditional kind of literary criticism, practiced by Robert Alter or Harold Fisch, that concentrates on the poetic imagery and the narrative contours of the book. . . . These omissions are regrettable, because detailed literary analysis may afford the best opportunity of redeeming the full register of voices and moods in Job from the temptation either to attribute to the book a uniform message or to reduce it to a series of obscure fragments.

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.