The term “new atheism” generally refers to the claims, made prominent by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and others, that religion is both objectively false and socially pernicious. According to Peter Berger, the new atheists have little to say that has not been said by critics of religion since the 18th century. What distinguishes them is their lack of intellectual subtlety:

What is at least relatively new about the “new atheism” is its aggressiveness and its attitude of absolute certainty (in that respect, curiously mirroring conservative Christianity, its main antagonist). Atheists can be described as people who have heard a voice from heaven telling them that heaven does not exist. There have been tormented atheists such as Friedrich Nietzsche, who proclaimed the “death of God” (he understood that this event, if it really took place, would be a cosmic tragedy). More recently Albert Camus in his novel The Plague depicted individuals who, without the comforts of faith, heroically defy suffering and evil. This is a far cry from the flippant contempt for religion that characterized H.L. Mencken (I would see him as a precursor of the post-1960s intelligentsia). He once proposed that the universe is a gigantic Ferris wheel, that man is a fly who happened to land on it and who thinks that the whole contraption was created for his benefit.

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.