Israeli researchers, using sophisticated imaging technology first developed by the American aerospace program, have deciphered the text on heretofore illegible fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ruth Schuster and Nir Hasson explain:

For the sake of posterity, digitalization, and research, all [the scrolls] are being photographed in high resolution under different types of light, which among other things brings previously unseen writing invisible to the naked eye, as well as some ink stains, to light. [One fragment’s] handwriting differs from previously found scroll fragments, [the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Oren] Ableman explains. Its uniqueness leads him to speculate that there may be a whole scroll that has disappeared, or at any rate, not been found yet. . . .

The writing on many of these fragments is just a few letters rather than complete words or sentences. Even so, Ableman could tell which scrolls most of the fragments were from, generally speaking. . . .

[The one exception] is written in ancient paleo-Hebrew, which could not be attributed to any one of the known manuscripts. This raises the possibility that it belonged to a still unknown manuscript. [Researchers] haven’t done carbon-dating on the fragment, but this form of blocky paleo-Hebrew was the script commonly used in the First Temple period. That said, some scrolls were still being written using that ancient script in the late Second Temple period. Even among the paleo-Hebrew fragments, there are signs that help the researchers distinguish differences between First Temple and Second Temple texts, and certain features of the handwriting indicate that this fragment dates to the late Second Temple period.

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.