The once-magnificent Great Synagogue of Vilna (Vilnius) was partially destroyed by the Germans during World War II; the Soviet demolished the rest of it in 1957. Now a group of archaeologists is trying to recover what remains. Toby Tabachnick writes:

Now mostly Catholic, Vilnius was once called the “Jerusalem of Lithuania” and was home to about 60,000 Jews, constituting about 30 percent of the city’s total population. The Nazis invaded Vilnius on June 24, 1941, and transported its Jews to the nearby forest of Ponary, where they were all murdered by firing squad. . . .

The team [of archaeologists] is creating plans of sub-surface locations of the remains of the Great Synagogue. . . . While housing and a school now sit on the site, some of the synagogue’s original structure remains below the surface. . . .

After as much information as possible can be obtained about the Great Synagogue, [the archaeologists’] goal is to have local authorities, including its current small Jewish community, erect either a memorial or a museum. It is unlikely the Great Synagogue will be rebuilt for use as a synagogue.

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.