When, in the midst of World War I, Britain acceded to Vladimir Jabotinsky’s lobbying and created a Jewish volunteer unit to join in the fight against the Ottomans, it appointed Colonel John Henry Patterson as its leader. Patterson, who was born in Ireland to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, sympathized strongly with Zionism and was an outspoken opponent of anti-Semitism. Veterans of the unit he commanded later helped form the core of the Haganah. Patterson died in California in 1947, but it was not until 2014 that his wish to be buried alongside his men in Israel was fulfilled. Myrna Strapp, the attorney who made the re-interment possible, speaks about Patterson’s life and her battle to have his remains brought to Israel. (Interview by Yishai Fleischer; audio, 32 minutes.)

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.