While the word philistine has come to mean uncouth or unsophisticated, historians now believe that the actual Philistines—who appear in the Bible as the main rivals of the early Israelites—were technologically and politically advanced. The late Trude Dothan, who pioneered archaeological research on the Philistines and the related tribes, known collectively as the Sea Peoples, writes (1982):

The Sea Peoples, including the Philistines, first appeared in the eastern Mediterranean in the second half of the 13th century BCE. At the time, the Egyptians and the Hittites were in power in the Levant (the Hittite empire centered in Anatolia), but both were weak, politically and militarily. The Sea Peoples exploited this power vacuum by invading areas previously subject to Egyptian and Hittite control. In wave after wave of land and sea assaults they attacked Syria, Palestine, and even Egypt itself. In the last and mightiest wave, the Sea Peoples, including the Philistines, stormed south from Canaan in a land and sea assault on the Nile Delta.

According to Egyptian sources, . . . Pharoah Ramesses III (ca. 1198–1166 BCE) soundly defeated them in the eighth year of his reign. He then permitted them to settle on the southern coastal plain of Palestine. There they developed into an independent political power and a threat both to the disunited Canaanite city-states and to the newly settled Israelites. Philistine culture and military power thrived, principally from the middle of the 12th to the end of the 11th century BCE, exerting a major influence on the history and culture of Canaan. From the end of the 11th century, Philistine influence and cultural distinctiveness waned. Ultimately, it was eclipsed by the rising star of the united Israelite monarchy.

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.