In 1912, the Polish collector Wilfrid Voynich discovered an old, handwritten book, written in a never-before-seen alphabet and accompanied by illustrations. It has since been examined by historians, linguists, cryptologists, and computer scientists, who have generated many theories about its origins—including that it was forged by Voynich himself—without producing anything conclusive. More recently the ink, paint, and vellum have been dated to the 15th century, and their chemical makeup suggests they come from Italy. The scholar Stephen Skinner, by focusing on the drawings rather than the text, now believes the author to have been Jewish, as Danuta Kean writes:

[Skinner] draws evidence for his theory of the author’s identity from a range of illustrations in the manuscript, particularly a section in which naked women are depicted bathing in green pools supplied by intestine-like pipes. [He] believes the illustrations show [ritual] Jewish baths called mikva’ot, which are still used [by Orthodox Jewish women] after childbirth or menstruation.

Pointing to the fact that the pictures show only nude women and no men, Skinner told the Guardian, “The only place you see women like that bathing together in Europe at that time was in the purification baths that have been used by Orthodox Jews for the last 2,000 years.”

He believes the drawings were of an invention designed by the mysterious author that aimed to ensure [by magical means] an efficient supply of clean water to a mikveh. . . . Other evidence Skinner uses to support his theory includes the lack of Christian symbolism in the manuscript—unusual [for the] time. . . . “There are no saints or crosses, not even in the cosmological sections,” he said.

Considered in addition to the absence of religious symbolism, Skinner said, visual clues in the manuscript suggest its author was a Jewish physician and herbalist. Many of the plants depicted, alongside astrological charts, are medicinal herbs such as opium and cannabis.

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.