Produced jointly by the Jewish Museum in Rome and the Vatican Museum, a current exhibition displays images of, and artifacts related to, the menorah of the ancient Jerusalem temples, ranging from a Jewish engraving of the candelabrum from the 1st century BCE to a painting by Marc Chagall. The exhibit gives the lie to the persistent legend that the menorah, Ark of the Covenant, and other sacred objects from the temples are being held in the Vatican. Reviewing the exhibit, Fredric Brandfon describes one of the earliest versions of this legend:

As one enters the exhibit in the Jewish Museum, the first object on display is a cast of the Tabula Magna Lateranensis, an inscription in mosaic tiles housed in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano and visible today on the left of the entrance of the sacristy. The basilica is the cathedral of Rome where, until 1870, popes were crowned. The Tabula Magna is a 37-line Latin inscription from the time of Pope Nicholas IV (1288–1292) listing the treasure kept in the cathedral of Rome and in the nearby chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum. Among the treasures listed is the Temple menorah, which, the inscription says, is the one pictured on the Arch of Titus.

Despite this attestation that the menorah had been kept in Rome as a treasure as late as the mid-13th century CE, it is thoroughly unlikely that such was the case. The Tabula Magna also lists as the basilica’s treasures Christ’s cloak, John the Baptist’s raiment of camel’s hair, the Ark of the Covenant, and the two Tablets of the Law. The Tabula Magna is an artifact of a time obsessed with holy relics, and it testifies only to a legend concerning the menorah propagated for the glory of its surrounding basilica.

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.