The Greek island of Delos is known as the mythical birthplace of Apollo and the location of an ancient oracle. Over 100 years ago, a French archaeologist discovered a structure there built in the 2nd century BCE, and concluded from inscriptions that it was a synagogue. But the case is far from closed, as Brian Schaefer writes:

The inscriptions found on or near [the structure] are not biblical prayers scrawled in Hebrew or Aramaic. That would be too easy. Rather, they reference names that [archaeologists] identified as Jewish (Agathokles and Lysimachos) and contain the word proseuche, which can refer specifically to a Jewish house of prayer—or can be applied more generally as a kind of offering.

If anything, additional inscriptions uncovered in 1979 actually offer explicit evidence of a Samaritan presence. Two of them honor benefactors of the community and begin: “The Israelites on Delos who make first-fruit offerings to Holy Argarizein”—which is a reference to Mount Gerizim, [the center of Samaritan worship].

[Yet the historian Lidia] Matassa is unconvinced that this answers the synagogue question one way or another. She points out that there is no way to know whether the dedications were made by a permanent community or by a passing traveler.

The physical structure of the space offers few clues, since it largely echoes the architecture and design of neighboring buildings. It is, however, found on the eastern shore and has a clear eastern orientation, which is characteristic of many synagogues.

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.