In a well-known rabbinic legend, a group of rabbis are walking on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, a city destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans, and see a fox wandering among the ruins of the Temple. They respond with tears—except for Rabbi Akiva, who bursts into laughter. Justifying their sorrow with a biblical verse, they ask Akiva to explain his bizarre behavior; he does so, citing a series of verses of his own. Meir Ben-Shahar offers a novel reading of Akiva’s answer, arguing that it originally served as an immediate call for armed revolt against Roman rule.

Akiva uses an innovative interpretation of Isaiah 8:1-2 to link a destructive prophecy—“Zion shall be plowed as a field” (Micah 3:12)—“with the prophet Zechariah’s redemptive vision that “there shall yet be old men and women in the squares of Jerusalem” (8:4-5). . . .

Micah’s prophecy about Zion being plowed as a field fits nicely with seeing the Temple Mount in shambles. But why, of the many prophecies of consolation in the book of Zechariah, did Akiva choose to quote these particular verses?

Note that the verse preceding the aforementioned prophecy in Zechariah states, “Thus said the Lord: I have returned to Zion, and I will dwell in Jerusalem. Jerusalem will be called the City of Faithfulness, and the mount of the Lord of Hosts the Holy Mount.” . . . Significantly, the only other verse in the Bible that place the terms “Zion, Jerusalem, and the mountain of the house / mountain of the Lord” alongside each other is the verse cited from Micah that predicts the calamity. . . . For this reason it is likely that Zechariah 8:3, and not the following verses, was originally quoted in Akiva’s homily. . . .

For some 60 years after its destruction [in 70 CE], Jerusalem served as a camp for a Roman legion. This situation changed after Emperor Hadrian’s visit to the East in 129-130 CE. If Hadrian indeed founded a new city on the ruins of Jerusalem during this visit, [as mounting historical evidence suggests], then Akiva’s interpretation essentially constitutes a call to revolt, together with the reassurance that now, when Micah’s prophecy of devastation has been realized in full, the time has come for God to return to Jerusalem as Zechariah promised.

Indeed, in 132 CE, the Jews, led by Simon bar Kokhba (whom Akiva is known to have supported) rose up against Roman rule. Ancient sources confirm that this revolt was provoked when Hadrian began rebuilding Jerusalem as a pagan city. According to Ben-Shahar, the text’s redactors, writing after the Bar Kokhba revolt ended in failure, altered Akiva’s words to leave the reader with a message of hope in the messianic future rather than with a call to arms.

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.