In the 1870s, an excavation near the Temple Mount turned up a stone with a Greek inscription, reading, “No foreigner may enter within the balustrade around the sanctuary and the enclosure. Whoever is caught, on himself shall he put blame for the death that will ensue.” Another, similar stone was discovered in Jerusalem in 1935. These are thought to have been part of the Second Temple, most likely added during Herod’s major renovations during the 1st century BCE. Ilan Ben Zion writes:

Two millennia ago, the [stone] block served as one of several “Do Not Enter” signs in the Second Temple in Jerusalem, delineating a section of the 37-acre complex that was off-limits for the ritually impure [and non-Jews]. . . . [However,] the warning inscriptions point to universal inclusion—not exclusion—of Gentiles on the Temple Mount. . . .

Gentiles were not only welcome to ascend the Temple Mount, [as long as they did not go past the boundaries marked by these stones], they were also permitted, if not encouraged, to donate animals for sacrifice. [The ancient historian] Josephus recounts how Marcus Agrippa, Emperor Augustus’s right hand man, visited Jerusalem shortly after the Temple was built and offered up a hecatomb—100 bulls—as a sacrifice on the altar.

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.