At a “candidate forum” that took place in a Minneapolis synagogue in August, now-Congresswoman Ilhan Omar stated that she believed the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS) is “not helpful in getting [a] two-state solution.” Yet on Sunday, after her successful election, her office reportedly stated that she “believes in and supports the BDS movement.” Meanwhile, the press has celebrated the fact that she and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress. The press, however, has not showed much interest in reporting on the attitude of either toward Jews, as David Harsanyi writes:

Omar, who replaces Keith Ellison—a former acolyte of the anti-Semitic minister Louis Farrakhan—also has some exotic notions about the Jewish people. In a 2012 tweet, for instance, [she] explained that “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel.” Meanwhile, . . . Tlaib . . . wants to cut aid to the Jewish state because supporting it “doesn’t fit the values of our country.”

The writer David Steinberg identified 105 news stories written in the immediate aftermath of Omar’s victory, and not a single one mentioned her belief that Jewry possessed mind-control abilities or that Israel was “evil.” No one called on the Democratic party to distance itself from this rhetoric. No one at the partisan Anti-Defamation League, ostensibly tasked with stopping anti-Jewish libel but in reality busy hyperventilating over every far-flung right-wing bigot with a handful of supporters, paid her any attention.

Now, it isn’t inherently anti-Semitic to be critical of Israeli political leadership or policies. . . . But Omar used a well-worn anti-Semitic trope about the preternatural ability of a nefarious Jewish cabal to deceive the world. . . . Omar had a chance to retract, or at least refine, her statement. Instead, she doubled down. “These accusations [of anti-Semitism] are without merit,” she claimed, blaming Jewish Islamophobia for the backlash. “They are rooted in bigotry toward a belief about what Muslims are stereotyped to believe.” . . . Omar even wants the U.S. to normalize relations with the Holocaust-denying terror-state of Iran. . . .

Omar’s defenders will claim she’s anti-Israel, not anti-Jewish. “Anti-Zionism” has been the preferred justification for hatred of Jews in institutions of education and within progressive activism for a long time. Now it’s coming for politics. Democrats can either [refuse to accept it], or they can remain silent.

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.