Digging in the upper Galilee, in what many experts believe to be Bethsaida—a town best-known from the New Testament—archaeologists have discovered a Bronze Age city gate and tower. Rami Arav, the director of the excavation, believes they once protected the capital of the biblical kingdom of Geshur. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

“In the entire archaeology of the Land of Israel from the 10th through 8th centuries BCE, there are no towers on city walls. Israelites did not have this feature. This is the earliest example,” . . . Arav said.

The Davidic-period gate was in use from around the 11th century BCE to 920 BCE when the settlement was destroyed. The Geshur settlement, which became a fortified city with a well-preserved royal palace, was re-inhabited after 875 BCE. “During this approximately 50-year period, the site was laid in ruin and not inhabited,” according to the dig’s 2016 field report. . . .

At the site, one can see the remains of a 3,500-year-old Bronze Age settlement, in the form of ancient dolmens (tombstones). . . . [T]he excavations have [also] uncovered a prosperous Hellenistic community. In addition to the city gate and wall excavation, this year’s dig also explored under the floors of a Roman temple uncovered in an earlier season. The temple . . . was probably dedicated to the worship of Julia, the daughter of Caesar Augustus, mentioned in Josephus’ Antiquities.

The site also displays a Jewish community in the Hasmonean and Herodian periods, occupation in the early Roman period, settlement in the Mamluk period, and a village in the late Ottoman period. . . .

As early as the late 11th or 10th centuries BCE—the putative time of Kings Saul, David, and Solomon—Bethsaida was the heart of the small kingdom of Geshur, populated by Arameans. Through the politically-motivated marriage of King Talmai of Geshur’s daughter Maachah to King David, [the Hebrew Bible states], Bethsaida allied itself with the Davidic monarchy. . . . Maachah was the mother of Absalom, who murdered his half-brother Amnon and fled to his mother’s homeland, Geshur. Ties were renewed when Absalom’s daughter, [also named] Maachah, married Solomon’s son Rehoboam, king of Judah.

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.