Archaeologists working near Kibbutz Shamir in northern Israel recently excavated a large field of tombs, thought to be roughly 4,000 years old. Among them is a specific type of tomb, constructed from large stones stacked in a table-like formation, called a dolmen. The discovery of these dolmens suggests far greater social complexity than most scholars thought existed in the region at the time. Ilan Ben Zion explains their significance:

To put [the discovery] into perspective, the standing stones at Stonehenge, which are slightly older than the Shamir dolmen field, are each around thirteen-feet high and almost seven-feet wide, and weigh 25 tons—half that of the capstone [of one dolmen]. All the stones of this dolmen together weigh somewhere in the vicinity of 400 tons, the researchers said. . . .

Altogether, the Shamir dolmens’ complex burial customs, hierarchy, and symbolic art defy scholars’ conception of society in the region during this period. . . .

“Even though we don’t have any regular archaeological evidence, like cities and towns and tels, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing here,” said [the study’s lead researcher, Gonen] Sharon. . . . “The dolmens suggest we’re looking at a much more complex governmental system. To build this kind of dolmen you have to gather enough people, you have to feed these people, you have to accommodate these people, you have to have the architectural and construction knowledge, and you must have a boss. Somebody needs to tell them what to do.”

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.