Stephen Sizer, an Anglican minister, is the subject of an investigation by his ecclesiastical superiors for posting a link to an anti-Semitic conspiracy website on his Facebook page. He has since removed the link and apologized. But as Betsy Childs notes, he has done this sort of thing before, and seems to have learned little:

In October 2011, Dr. Sizer apologized for calling Israeli Christians who support their nation “an abomination.” . . . The same month, Dr. Sizer posted a link on Facebook to an anti-Semitic website called The Ugly Truth. He apologized in an email to his bishop. . . . By the following May, Dr. Sizer had posted a link to another anti-Semitic website called Veterans Today. He issued a public apology. . . .

Just one month later, in June 2012, Dr. Sizer apologized for posting a link to the anti-Semitic website Window into Palestine. The site refers to the Holocaust as the “Hollow Cause” and includes ads for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. His apology, which appeared in the Jewish Chronicle, announced that he had removed the link but pleaded the justification that it is “not always possible to run background checks on every website before linking to materials.” . . .

This January, Stephen Sizer posted a link to an article from a website called Wikispooks. The article with the headline “9/11, Israel did it” outlined a conspiracy theory laying the responsibility for the September 11 terrorist attacks on Jews. . . . The Church of England put out a statement that Dr. Sizer’s conduct was unacceptable and promised an investigation into the matter. Only then did Dr. Sizer apologize for this his most egregious Facebook link yet. . . .

What can be learned from all these episodes? While Stephen Sizer has shown himself ready to apologize, he has been unwilling to alter his behavior. It is past time for his church to stop allowing him to plead carelessness as his excuse.

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.