Working in cooperation with Israeli authorities, Egyptian police interdicted at least one smuggler trying to transport six antique objects via Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Amanda Borschel-Dan describes some of these unusual items, most of which were dated to the 18th century:

Included in the trove was a cane with a handle carved in stone which depicts a bearded man wearing a yarmulke. . . . An additional find in the seized collection was a 29-page Hebrew book described by Egyptian authorities as “the commandments of Judas Iscariot.” . . .

Two images of pages from the book released by the [Egyptian] Ministry of Antiquities include esoteric “Hebrew” text, which appears to be a poor translation from some other language. The pages are black and white and decorated with what could be either scorpions or lobsters. In the center of each page is a poster-like block of text written in disjointed Hebrew.

One page is titled “To the level of” and uses modern Hebrew words, including matkon (recipe), which would date the page to within the past 100 years.

The second page, which is illustrated by a Greek goddess-like woman holding a menorah triton, roughly reads, “Learn how to rise above things, and this can be done if I weren’t strong,” in a Hebrew one might suspect was written through Google Translate.

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.