Scholars have long believed that ancient Semitic alphabets were derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics. Thus, the symbol for house (Hebrew bayit) came to stand for the sound b, the symbol for water (Hebrew mayim) for the sound m, etc. This system was then adopted by other Near Eastern peoples, although which used it first remains unknown. Speaking at a recent academic conference, the archaeologist Douglas Petrovich claimed to have deciphered the earliest extant inscriptions in this writing system—found on several Egyptian stone tablets—by reading them as if they were Hebrew. The inscriptions date to the 19th century BCE, when, according to the biblical account, the Israelites settled in Egypt. Bruce Bower writes:

Scholars have generally assumed for more than 150 years that the . . . script Petrovich studied could be based on any of a group of ancient Semitic languages. But not enough is known about those tongues to specify one language in particular.

Petrovich says his big break came in January 2012. While conducting research at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, he came across the word “Hebrews” in a text from 1874 BCE. . . . [He] then combined previous identifications of some letters in the ancient script with his own identifications of disputed letters to peg the script as Hebrew. Armed with the entire fledgling alphabet, he translated eighteen Hebrew inscriptions from three Egyptian sites.

Several biblical figures turn up in the translated inscriptions, including Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his half-brothers and then became a powerful political figure in Egypt, Joseph’s wife Asenath, and Joseph’s son Manasseh—a leading figure in a turquoise-mining business that involved yearly trips to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Moses . . . is also mentioned, Petrovich says.

[But] Petrovich’s Hebrew identification for the ancient inscriptions is starved for evidence, said the biblical scholar and Semitic-language specialist Christopher Rollston of George Washington University, [who claimed that] there is no way to tell which of many Semitic languages are represented by the early alphabetic system.

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.