In 2004, a team of archaeologists obtained thousands of tons of dirt that had been illegally removed from the Temple Mount and began sifting through it—with the help of amateur volunteers—to retrieve whatever ancient artifacts might be found. The Temple Mount Sifting project, as the endeavor is now known, has chosen twelve of these items by which to tell the history of the site. The first, discovered in 2011, is an amulet with Egyptian hieroglyphics on it, bearing an official epithet for Pharaoh Thutmose III and likely dating to his reign, centuries before the putative date of the Exodus. Daniel Shani writes:

Thutmose III reigned in Egypt from 1479 to 1425 BCE. He was a member of the 18th dynasty, which ruled in the beginning of the era in Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. . . . Meanwhile, in the land the Egyptians knew as Retjenu, and which the Bible calls “Canaan,” the Late Bronze Age was in full swing, and the country was divided among local “kings”—rulers of city-states.

Thutmose III helped turn Egypt into a superpower by extending his empire from southern Syria, through Canaan, all the way to Nubia. . . . The first, and probably largest, of Thutmose III’s seventeen military campaigns took place in Canaan. The Canaanite city-states revolted against pharaonic attempts at hegemony but were soundly trounced by Thutmose’s superior forces and tactics at the battle of Megiddo in 1457 BCE.

And so the Egyptians ruled the land until the mid-12th century BCE, leaving their mark on archaeological sites throughout the country. [Egyptian] archives relate a rich correspondence between the pharaoh and the rulers of the city-states of Canaan, including the king of Jerusalem, Abdi-Heba. In his six letters, Abdi‑Heba beseeches the pharaoh for help against the Habiru people, and against the rulers of cities such as Shechem, Gezer, and Lachish who, unlike himself, show no loyalty to the pharaoh.

Strangely enough, when reading each of the other rulers’ letters, one finds that each claims to be the only one truly loyal to the pharaoh.

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.