In the second book of Kings, Hezekiah, who ruled during the late-8th and early-7th centuries BCE, is one of the few monarchs who comes off as a hero. He defended the kingdom of Judah against the Assyrian onslaught, listened to the words of the prophet Isaiah, and cracked down on idolatry and the bringing of sacrifices outside the Jerusalem Temple. David Rafael Moulis explains some of the archaeological evidence for these reforms:

A large 9th-century horned altar was discovered [in Beersheba]—already dismantled. Three of its four “horns” [rectangular projections on the four corners of the top of the altar] were found intact, embedded in a wall. Their secondary use indicates that the stones were no longer considered sacred. The horned altar was dismantled during Hezekiah’s reign, which we know because some of its stones were reused in a public storehouse that was built when the Assyrians threatened Judah and was destroyed by the Assyrian army in 701. . . .

Next we move to Lachish. The second most important city in Judah after Jerusalem, Lachish was a military and administrative center in the Judean hills. . . . In 2016, an 8th-century BCE cultic place at Lachish was uncovered next to the main city gate. Archaeologists have called this cultic place a “gate-shrine.” In it were found two small horned altars, whose horns had been cut off and embedded in an adjacent wall. Further, a square toilet was found installed in the shrine but was never used. The toilet was more of a symbolic act of desecration (see 2Kings 10:27)—part of Hezekiah’s cultic reforms.

The best candidate for the elimination [of these cultic sites and others] is King Hezekiah, who probably ordered the abolition of all official cultic sites. Only the Jerusalem Temple and small, household shrines were spared.

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.