A volunteer sifting ancient debris from the vicinity of the Temple Mount uncovered a small stone with the word beka—a measurement of weight equal to a half-shekel—inscribed on it in Hebrew. In First Temple times, such stones were used in scales to weigh precious metals. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

The beka [was] used by pilgrims paying their half-shekel tax before ascending to the Temple Mount. . . . The word beka appears twice in the Torah: first as the weight of gold in a nose ring given to the matriarch Rebecca in the book of Genesis, and later in the book of Exodus as a weight for the donation brought by the Jewish people for the maintenance of the Temple and the census, as recorded in Exodus 38:26. . . .

The beka stone was discovered in dirt taken from 2013 excavations under Robinson’s Arch. According to Eli Shukron, [the director of the excavation], the earth came from a drainage canal under the foundation of the Western Wall.

During this era, unlike several hundred years later, there was no half-shekel coin. Pilgrims brought the equivalent weight, a beka, in silver to pay their tax, which would have been measured out on scales in the very spot under the Temple Mount where the tiny stone weight was unearthed.

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.