A foundation created by the fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg has begun a project to restore Venice’s former ghetto in order to preserve the memory of its once-great Jewish community. Livia Albeck-Ripka writes:

The rehabilitation of the Venice ghetto is long overdue. In 1516 the Serenissima Repubblica confined its Jews to the first ghetto in the world. Gated into a small, polluted island on the periphery of the city, the community was locked up at midnight by Christian guards whom they had to pay upon entering the ghetto; they were discharged at dawn. But while the ghetto was created as an act of segregation, over time it became a refuge in which Jewish culture and identity thrived. Both imprisoned and united by the canals of Venice, Jews found—despite the intentions of the government—a space in which to wholly express themselves, forging a community that would go on to influence the city, and Europe as a whole.

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.