After the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in the 8th century BCE, some of its subjects—member of the Ten Lost Tribes—settled in what is now the Syrian city of Palmyra, where they eventually adopted the local Aramaic language. In the 6th century BCE, likely fleeing an expansionist Babylonia, Israelites and Arameans in Syria resettled in Egypt, where they continued to live side by side. One such Israelite-Aramean community produced a remarkable text, which scholars have only recently been able to make sense of, as Karel van der Toorn writes:

It is one of the most spectacular discoveries in ancient Near Eastern studies of recent years—an Egyptian papyrus from the mid-4th century BCE containing three psalms that originated in the [northern] kingdom of Israel before the fall of Samaria (722 BCE). They provide unique insight into the beliefs and practices of the early Israelites.

The scribes of the scroll used Egyptian Demotic script to write texts in the Aramaic language. The Israelite psalms are also in Aramaic, though several irregularities show they were originally in Hebrew. One of them bears a close resemblance to Psalm 20. The two others are completely new to us. They stand side by side in the papyrus, connected by a common theme.

These songs were to be sung at the autumn harvest festival and the God they invoke is called Yaho [a variation of the Tetragrammaton] or Adonay, [“my Lord”]. There are references to sacrifices of lambs and sheep, bowls filled with wine, and music of lyres and flutes. On the day of the new moon, [i.e., the first day of the Hebrew month], there is a solemn banquet for the God and his worshippers during which Yaho determines destinies for the year to come. “The Merciful One exalts the great, Yaho humiliates the lowly one.” The psalms celebrate his kingship over all other gods. In combination, these various elements point to a setting in the New Year festival—the historical antecedent of Rosh Hashanah. . . .

Understanding these texts has taken over a century. . . . Because the Aramaic texts were written in the Demotic script, experts classified the scroll initially as an Egyptian papyrus. After Lord Amherst of Hackney acquired the text in the 1890s, Egyptologists tried in vain to break its code. Papyrus Amherst 63 was a particular mystery. It took the collaboration of an Aramaic scholar and a Demotic specialist to solve the riddle.

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.