Yesterday marked the anniversary of the burning of a synagogue by a Christian mob in the Levantine Roman city of Callinicum—roughly contiguous with Raqqa, currently the capital of Islamic State—in 388 CE. David B. Green writes:

[This] was not the first time that a Jewish place of worship had been destroyed by Christians in the early decades after the adoption of Christianity by Emperor Constantine. . . .

Much less is known about the background to the arson than about what followed, but apparently the bishop of Callinicum incited from the pulpit against the Jews and their evil teachings and ways. The burning of the synagogue was the response the bishop’s followers deemed appropriate. . . .

[T]he secular legal authorities of the province ordered the rioters of Callinicum and their rabble-rousing priest to compensate the Jews—either by rebuilding the synagogue for them or by paying them so they could undertake the reconstruction themselves. That judgment was then confirmed by Theodosius, at the time ruler of the eastern part of the Roman empire, whose seat was in Milan.

Under pressure from the church father St. Ambrose, then bishop of Milan, Theodosius eventually reversed the verdict.

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.