Israeli archaeologists recently discovered a trove of silver coins dating from the time of the Jewish revolt against Syrian-Greek rule. They were discovered in the town of Modi’in, which was the hometown of the Hasmonean dynasty that led the uprising. Sue Surkes writes:

The sixteen coins from the Hasmonean period (ca. 167-63 BCE) were concealed in a rock crevice up against a wall of a large agricultural estate, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday.

The excavation’s director Abraham Tendler said the shekels and half-shekels were minted in the city of Tyre, now part of Lebanon, and bear the images of the [Seleucid] king, Antiochus VII, and his brother Demetrius II. . . .

The discovery of the silver coins provides, [according to Tendler], “compelling evidence that one of the members of the estate who had saved his income for months needed to leave the house for some unknown reason. He buried his money in the hope of coming back and collecting it, but was apparently unfortunate and never returned. It is exciting to think that the coin hoard was waiting here 2,140 years until we exposed it.” . . .

Numerous bronze coins minted by the Hasmonean kings were also discovered in the excavation in addition to the sixteen silver ones, the authority reported. They bear the names of kings such as Yehoḥanan, Judah, Jonathan, or Mattathias with the title “high priest and head of the Council of the Jews.”

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.