Yesterday, Israeli archaeologists announced that a hiker had found a Roman coin from the early 2nd century CE. Stuart Winer writes:

The coin carries an image of Emperor Augustus, . . . who ruled from 27 BCE until his death in 14 CE, and was minted by Emperor Trajan in 107 CE. Only the British Museum in London has another coin like it, which, until the recent discovery, was thought to be the only one in the world. . . .

Trajan ordered coins struck with images of previous Roman emperors to honor their memory. . . .

According to Donald T. Ariel, head curator of the coin department at the Israel Antiquities Authority, “the coin may reflect the presence of the Roman army in the region some 2,000 years ago—possibly in the context of activity against Bar Kokhba’s supporters in the Galilee—but it is very difficult to determine that on the basis of a single coin.” Bar Kokhba led an ultimately doomed Jewish rebellion against Roman rule in the land of Israel between 132 and 136 CE.

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.