The Temple Mount Sifting Project, directed by two experts on the history of ancient Israel, has allowed thousands of volunteers to comb through rubble from the site to look for artifacts. Recently, a ten-year-old participant discovered a stone seal that archaeologists date to the presumed time of Kings David and Solomon. Henry Curtis Pelgrift writes:

The seal is a tiny piece of limestone whose purpose was probably to seal documents. Photographs . . . show that it is cone-shaped, with a circular sealing surface about the size of a fingertip. Figures carved into it show one animal on top of another, possibly its prey. The seal is perforated, so that a string can be inserted and used to hang it around a person’s neck. . . .

In describing the significance of the find, [the project’s directors], Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Dvira, said, “The seal is the first of its kind to be found in Jerusalem. . . . The dating of the seal corresponds to the historical period of the Jebusites and the conquest of Jerusalem by King David, as well as the construction of the Temple and the royal official compound by his son, King Solomon. . . . [W]hat makes this discovery particularly significant is that it originated from the Temple Mount itself.” . . .

However, some scholars . . . have warned that too much importance should not be [ascribed to] a single seal. Lenny Wolfe, a collector of antiquities, [argues] that the fact that the seal can be easily moved from place to place means that it could have been carried to Jerusalem at any point and forgotten.

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.