Two years ago, the archaeologist Richard Freund visited the Greek island of Rhodes to determine why a 16th-century synagogue there had two arks for its Torah scrolls rather than one. His research led him to launch a major archaeological investigation, uncovering information about a Jewish community that dates back to the time of the Second Temple. (Interview by Cindy Mindell.)

The main synagogues [on the island] are Kahal Chalom, [built in] the 16th century, and Kahal Gadol or Kahal Grande, [known] by both [its] Hebrew and Ladino names. They were [probably] both destroyed in 1944, but we’re trying to establish [the existence of] earlier levels of the synagogues [in our excavation]. There are multiple layers not necessarily because they were destroyed by people, but [because] there are earthquakes in Rhodes every 100 to 150 years. The 16th-century synagogue was probably built on the synagogue that was destroyed in 1481, during a very famous earthquake. There was an earthquake in 1300, one in the 1200s, and one in 1000. We’re working on excavating earlier layers of the synagogues in order to determine what they looked like, and if there are any artifacts that remained from the earlier layers that were buried. . . .

While we were in Rhodes, we were given [an additional] assignment, which was to find the existence of an earlier synagogue than what the archaeological community thinks was the earliest, built in the 12th or 13th century by the wall of the port.

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.