As the story is usually told, U.S. Jews feel increasingly distant from the Jewish state because of Benjamin Netanyahu, or the settlements, or the failures of the “peace process.” This supposedly contrasts with the good old days when American Jews looked with admiration on their Israeli brethren. But this analysis, writes Amnon Lord, paints an entirely deceptive picture:

For many people in Israel, ties with American Jewry are a very personal matter. We met those same Jews years ago when they were young. They—and we—aren’t young anymore. Back then, a thousand years ago on the kibbutz, they were volunteers and students of Hebrew who got up early to harvest melons. Or to work in the cowshed. They learned to love the landscape, the fields, the pool, and the dining hall. There was virtually no argument about Israel in and of itself. . . .

Today . . . a considerable number of the volunteers from the late 1960s and early 1970s are furious with Israel. Back then, they experienced the country for themselves. They saw what a country looked like after a war. Today, they are experiencing Israel via infusions from the left-leaning media. . . . Some of the Jews we used to know have developed a knee-jerk anti-Israel reaction. All the existential threats to the country don’t bother them. . . .

[Since the 1970s], many American Jews have suffered a moral collapse, and based on what they read in the New York Times, they think the Jewish state has no right to defend itself because even if its existence is legal, it is no longer legitimate.

What is interesting is that the more complicated Israel becomes, the less it is understood by American Jewry. . . . American Jews were comfortable with the homogeneous, idealistic image of Israel. . . . Now that Israel has a much stronger presence diplomatically, economically, and in the media, it’s hard for them to accept. Independent policy and even opposition to the American president, such as existed in the time of President Barack Obama, has led to a crisis among the Jews. Under Richard Nixon, when Israel butted heads with the administration about Soviet Jewry, there were no political difficulties for the Jews; they were part of the Democratic opposition, Under President Obama, when Netanyahu was unafraid of conflict, the Jews—who were part of the Democratic coalition—were in trouble. The prime minister wasn’t counting on them as a base of support for his policies against Iran.

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.