Over the past 25 years, after decades of foot-dragging and obstruction by those with access to them, the vast majority of the texts found in the caves of Qumran have been examined and published. But as the scholar Martin Abegg points out in a discussion with his colleagues Peter Flint and Andrew Perrin, making the scrolls available for study is “simply the beginning of the conversation.” (Interview by Megan Sauter.)

The value of the scrolls . . . extends beyond academia. My work in this field rests on the unshakable conviction that the Dead Sea Scrolls are foundational to understanding the origins of Judaism and Christianity and are, therefore, part of the underlying fabric of contemporary Western culture. The Qumran finds provide exhilarating views of the past . . . as well as plug us into larger questions of relevance to theological and religious studies. Questions about wealth, poverty, ethics, identity formation, community dynamics, and gender, to name a few, are only recently being asked of the Dead Sea Scrolls. . . . To be honest, I think we have yet to realize the full significance of these finds.

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.