Underneath an ancient road in the area of Jerusalem known as the City of David, archaeologists have discovered an enormous collection of fossilized food waste that dates to the 10th century CE—shortly after the Muslim conquest of the city. Amanda Borschel-Dan reports:

According to well-preserved seeds, bones, and other refuse, ancient city dwellers feasted on beef, fish, and fowl, with sides of veggies and lentils. And for dessert? How about cake, or a fruit salad of figs, grapes, and black mulberries?

The fossilized refuse provides physical evidence of the urban diet of the early Islamic period in Israel. Also on the menu, said Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists, were eggs, fish, different possibly medicinal grasses—and the first proof of locally grown eggplant. . . .

The preserved pits and seeds give insight into the economy, trade and agriculture during the Abbasid caliphate, which ruled the region [at the time]. Among the vessels discovered in the garbage dump was an ancient lamp bearing the inscription barakha or blessing, in Arabic.

Whether the refuse was produced by Jews, Christians, Arabs, or some combination remains to be seen.

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.