Located on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, the town of Magdala became an important economic center during the 1st century CE; it is also thought to be the birthplace of the New Testament’s Mary Magdalene. The wealth generated by the export of salted fish, and perhaps glass vessels and other manufactured goods as well, accounts for the size of the town’s ruins, which archaeologists are still excavating, as well as its elaborate synagogue. Marcela Zapata-Meza writes:

Magdala’s income sources could allow the residents to afford expensive and well-constructed buildings, such as the 1st-century CE synagogue and Jewish ritual baths discovered in excavations. Magdala is the only town in Galilee, so far, [where archaeologists have found] a 1st-century synagogue with frescoes, mosaics, and a unique Second Temple model carved in stone. [This is the only such stone to be] discovered in the biblical lands. The Jewish ritual baths . . . are [also] dated to the 1st century CE and are fed by underground water.

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.