Archaeologists have discovered artifacts on Mount Zion—located near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem—stretching from the 8th century BCE to the period of Ottoman rule. Among other things, they have uncovered a housing complex they believe belonged to the family of the High Priest in the 1st century CE. It contains some familiar objects of Jewish life, including a ritual cup:

The cup . . . was found in four pieces within a fill layer containing 1st-century pottery fragments above a barrel-vaulted ceiling of a mikveh (ritual bath). . . . The inscription on the cup has not yet been completely and definitively translated, but study of the cup and the historical context of its finding suggest that it might have been a ritual-cleansing cup, used for the washing of hands before engaging in liturgical functions. [Excavation director Shimon] Gibson suggests [that] “the discovery of the cup in the area of the upper city of Jerusalem, in which priestly families are known to have resided . . . may hint at the original priestly function that this specific vessel had some 2,000 years ago.”

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.