An excavation near the southern wall of the Temple Mount has uncovered a bulla (clay seal) bearing the name of King Hezekiah, who ruled over Judea at the end of the 8th century BCE. Daniel Eisenbud writes:

The impression [on the seal] bears an inscription in ancient Hebrew script stating: “Belonging to Hezekiah [son of] Ahaz king of Judah,” accompanied by a two-winged sun with wings turned downward, flanked by two ankh symbols symbolizing life. The bulla originally sealed a document written on a papyrus rolled and tied with thin cords, which left their mark on the reverse of the bulla. . . .

“This is the first time that a seal impression of an Israelite or Judean king has ever come to light in a scientific archaeological excavation,” said [the excavation’s director] Eilat Mazar.

King Hezekiah is described favorably in the Bible (II Kings, Isaiah, II Chronicles) as well as in the chronicles of the Assyrian kings Sargon II and his son Sennacherib, who ruled during his time. . . . The Bible states of Hezekiah: “There was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those before him” (II Kings 18:5).

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.