Mentioned repeatedly in the Bible, as well as in other ancient texts, the fortress city of Lachish was one of the most important locales in biblical Israel. Archaeologists have been exploring its ruins since the 1930s, but have only recently discovered a fortified wall that has been dated to the 10th century BCE. The Times of Israel reports:

Yosef Garfinkel, head of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology, announced the find at a conference two weeks ago. . . . The discovery, he argued, bolsters the account in the book of Chronicles of the city during the reign of [Solomon’s son and successor], the 10th-century-BCE king Rehoboam, which says: “And Rehoboam dwelt in Jerusalem, and built cities for defense in Judah: he built even Bethlehem, and Etam, and Tekoa, . . . and Lachish, . . . and Hebron, which are in Judah and in Benjamin, fortified cities.”

“During the Late Bronze Age, Lachish was a very large, grand Canaanite city. Then in the 12th century BCE, it was destroyed, and stood waste for 200 or 250 years,” said Garfinkel. “The big question for research in the city is what happened in Layer 5, [which could date to either the 9th or 10th century]. We found a wall between Layer 6 and Layer 4. Later the excavators reached a floor that stretches to the wall, which could be dated using olive pits found beneath the floors. Samples of the pits were sent to the particle accelerator at Oxford, which ruled that the wall had been built around 920 BCE, which was exactly the reign of Rehoboam.”

A fortress built at this time would suggest that the Judean kingdom had its origins in the 10th century—when David, Solomon, and Rehoboam would have lived—rather than the 9th, as many scholars believe. To some of those scholars, Garfinkel’s claims are not conclusive.

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.