The Dead Sea Scrolls are called that because they were discovered in caves in the Negev desert, not far from the Dead Sea, in the vicinity of the ancient community of Qumran. For some time, eleven caves have been known to have contained Jewish parchments from the Second Temple period. Now archaeologists have found one more, but believe the scrolls in it were taken by Bedouin in the middle of the last century. Ruth Schuster writes:

The cave lies in the stark desert cliff west of Qumran, near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. . . . If [the archaeologists] are right, it is the first new “scroll cave” to be identified in over 60 years. Evidence that the cave once housed scrolls is indirect. A number of lidded pottery jars of a type typical of the Second Temple period (between 530 BCE and 70 CE) were found concealed in niches along the walls of the cave and deep inside a long tunnel at its rear, say the archaeologists. But the jars were all broken and their contents were removed.

Why accuse modern Bedouin? Because the archaeologists also found two iron pickaxe heads from the 1950s that had been left inside the tunnel, presumably for reuse. Cave 8 had been the same—scroll jars, but no parchments, were found. At least none with writing. One jar in Cave 12 did contain a rolled up parchment, but it was blank. . . .

Aside from the shattered jars and scroll debris, the archaeologists found an elaborate stamp seal made of the semi-precious stone carnelian, and evidence that prehistoric man had also once dwelled in these cliff-side desert caves.

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.