In the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, the Galilean city of Sepphoris (Tsippori) was one of the most important centers of Jewish religious and intellectual life. Archaeologists have recently discovered three 1,700-year-old tombstones there, as the Israel Antiquities Authority reports:

The two Aramaic inscriptions mention individuals referred to as “rabbis” who were buried in the western cemetery of Sepphoris; their names have not yet been deciphered.

According to Motti Aviam of the Kinneret Institute for Galilean Archaeology, the importance of the epitaphs lies in the fact that they reflect the everyday life of the Jews of Sepphoris and their cultural world. Researchers are uncertain as to the meaning of the term “rabbi” at the time. . . Both inscriptions end with the Hebrew blessing shalom.

The Greek inscription mentions the name Yose, which was very common among Jews living in Israel and abroad.

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.