While archaeologists working in Israel usually expect to come across objects from the biblical and talmudic eras, an excavation in the central part of the country uncovered something far more recent but still significant. Yori Yalon writes:

Remnants of a World War I battle between British and Turkish forces were discovered recently in an archaeological dig near [the city of] Rosh Ha’ayin. The findings, which include dozens of bullet casings, mortar shells, and military paraphernalia, were uncovered during an Israel Antiquities Authority dig carried out ahead of the paving of a road connecting Rosh Ha’ayin to the nearby Afek Industrial Park. . . .

The discovery that a battle had taken place at the site was made after a broken piece of insignia from a British beret was found. Bullets and casings from an Ottoman rifle were soon found nearby. . . .

Yossi Elisha, the director of the dig, [said], “These findings are evidence of one of the major battles that occurred in the land of Israel between British and Turkish forces in World War I.”

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.