Immigration to Israel in 2014 was at its highest in a decade. No doubt, this had something to do with the wave of anti-Semitism sweeping Europe. But Jews do not come to Israel solely to escape persecution; like Rom Lerner, who emigrated from Kenya with the assistance of Garin Tzabar, an Israel Scouts project, many come because they want to live in and serve their national homeland. He writes of his own experience:

Most of us have not personally experienced unusual anti-Semitic events, most of our parents haven’t been seriously affected by the economic situation, and to be honest, most of us had a comfortable, well-planned life ahead of us. The truth is that the real reason is very simple and contains two parts. . . . None of the young people of Garin Tzabar, myself included, have given up—despite the many temptations—on our right to take on the burden of protecting our Jewish identity. We were never willing to cut the historic, cultural, or religious ties that bind us [to the Jewish people], even if some of us had only seen Israel on postcards. We always fought—in school, at conferences, in forums, in conversations with friends—to tell Israel’s side, despite the criticism we got for it.

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.