In ancient times, small clay objects known as bullae were used to seal scrolls and to identify their authors. An Israeli archaeologist, along with his son, recently discovered an enormous trove of bullae in a cave located in the ancient Judean city of Mareshah. According to experts, the original scrolls had disintegrated while the bullae survived. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

An initial survey of 300 of the 1,020 clay sealings indicates they were strung on documents from a large private archive. The quantity and quality of the new, almost unprecedented hoard of sealings is rare on an international scale. . . .

Located in Israel’s Sh’feylah region in the foothills of the Judean Mountains, Mareshah, today a recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site, was once a culturally diverse city with a small Jewish population at the crossroads of [Alexander the Great’s] empire. . . . Mostly dating to the time of the Maccabees, previous “incredibly rich” artifacts discovered at the site come from corners of the empire as far-flung as the Black Sea. . . .

[The bullae, which] primarily date from the 2nd century BCE, depict images of gods, including Athena, Aphrodite, and Apollo, as well as erotic themes, masks, standing figures, and cornucopia. There were a few with Greek letters and numbers indicating dates, but as yet none of the sealings have been found with other written inscriptions.

[Mareshah] was conquered by Jews [during the Maccabean revolt, around 160 BCE] and abandoned in 107 BCE by King John Hyrcanus I. Roman-era pottery discovered at the site give indications that the cave complex was also used by Jews weathering the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132-135 CE.

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.