The archaeologists who discovered a statue not far from the Gaza border are themselves unsure how it got there, writes Ilan Ben Zion:

Alexander Fraiberg, head archaeologist [of the team that discovered the dolphin], said he believes the sculpture dates to the Roman era, but was incorporated into a later, Byzantine-era paved floor. . . .

“It’s interesting because the statuette was lying face down, so it was impossible to see its appearance,” he said. Experts believe that the dolphin, standing about sixteen inches high, may have been part of a larger sculpture, possibly a life-size statue of a god or goddess. . . .

“The mystery,” said Fraiberg, “is where the statue came from, who destroyed it, when, and under what circumstances, and who brought the piece with the dolphin to the site.”

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.