Do Middle East politics affect the way archaeologists talk and write about ancient Israel? Without a doubt, writes Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review. He offers some disturbing examples regarding Jericho, now under the control of the Palestinian Authority:

A conference was recently held at University College London titled “Digging Up Jericho.” Scholars from England, the United States, Holland, Italy, Denmark, and the Palestinian Department of Antiquities presented papers. No scholars from you-know-where were on the program. . . .

[N]one of the papers dealt with whether the excavation revealed any information—positive or negative—about the biblical account of the destruction of Jericho. The Bible was apparently verboten. No one would ever know the Bible dealt with the site. . . .

In the spring of 2012, I met an archaeologist in Jerusalem who was associated with [the ongoing excavation at Jericho]. When she told me about it, I naturally thought of the possibility of an article in Biblical Archaeology Review. I mentioned this to her, and she seemed to be receptive. We decided to go to the site and talk further about it. We had a great visit, and on the way back we agreed on the general outline of an article. . . .

Despite the promising start, the archaeologist later declined to write the article, citing “the political situation.” Shanks surmises this was an oblique indication that her research would be stopped if she attached her name to an article that discussed the Bible’s account of the city.

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.