Beginning in the late 8th century BCE, the city of Jerusalem underwent more than a century of growth and expansion, during which the local economy became more centered on the capital. Lidar Sapir-Hen, Yuval Gadot, and Israel Finkelstein explain their recent findings on the economic role of livestock in this period, based on the study of artifacts and ancient animal remains from the area around the Western Wall and Tel Moza, a site located just outside Jerusalem:

[O]ur study reveals a class system within Jerusalem. . . . People living in locations close to the Temple Mount show a higher economic standing . . . compared to those in a neighborhood on the southeastern slope of the City of David ridge. . . .

While those residing next to the Temple enjoyed prime cuts of meat and were not engaged in actual herding or agriculture, lower-status groups showed some level of agriculture and [production] of secondary products [such as wool]. The City of David ridge is the only area within the city suitable for conducting small-scale agriculture. That the Temple and palace elite of Jerusalem had specialized herders of sheep and goats [whom they hired to tend flocks outside the city] is well attested in other studies, showing herding of “royal” herds in the Judean Desert.

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.