In 2009, archaeologists in Tiberias discovered a large basalt door with a seven-branched menorah carved into it. Although the style of the door and the carving were typical of Jewish tombs built between the 2nd and 4th centuries CE, the carving became part of a staircase in a complex built much later by Crusaders. Now the archaeologists have a theory of how it got there, writes Amanda Borschel-Dan:

Following the Muslim conquest in 635 CE, [Tiberias] became a seat for the early caliphate. It was during this period, said the excavation’s leader Katya Tzitrin Silverman, that the menorah door was reused as the base of a mosque, which was built on an earlier mosque. . . . [I]t is clear that the use of this door by the Muslims in building a mosque was highly intentional. The mosque, she said, also contained reused pagan and Christian pillars, which were put on display as corner pieces.

These materials taken for intentional secondary use are called “spolia.” . . . They are trophies, a way of clearly stating, “We’re building our structure on the backs of those who came before us,” [Silverman] said. “There is an expression of victory and inheritance” in their use, she said.

Interestingly . . . there was a church located next to the mosque which used the spolia. According to an inscription found at the church’s nave, it was still in use until at least the 10th century.

The mosque that was built upon the menorah was destroyed in an earthquake in 1068. Subsequently, its building materials were reused by the Crusaders and so the menorah became the decoration for a staircase in a room in a sugar factory.

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.