On January 13, after the mass demonstrations in which millions waved tri-colored flags and chanted the Marseillaise, a poll found 87 percent of the French saying they were “feeling proud” of being French. Yet, writes Michel Gurfinkiel, “near unanimity is not unanimity.”

What soon became apparent was that only the Old French (the culturally European and Judeo-Christian French) took part in the vigils and marches and were delighted to be together, whereas most New French (the culturally non-European and non-Judeo-Christian immigrant communities) stood aside.

Most imams issued perfunctory condemnation of terrorism, but were clearly unenthusiastic about Charlie Hebdo’s right to make fun of [Islam]. Even more ominously, one-minute-of-silence ceremonies at school were met with hostility and scorn by Muslim children and teenagers from third grade to high school. . . . Many people or groups associated with Charlie Hebdo were threatened on the Internet. In the Lyons area, a Jewish jeweler’s shop was vandalized.

In other words, the ethnic and religious polarization that has befallen France over the past years is growing into an ever more explicit conflict. And this is no small business.

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.