Reviewing a recent book about graffiti that appear to have been written by Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, Jillian Stinchcomb writes:

“Good luck with your resurrection!” So a passerby wrote in the grave complex at [the ancient Galilean town of] Beit She’arim, in fairly messy—although still legible—Greek in the ceiling and entryway wall of a catacomb. This somewhat cheeky greeting is one among many charming, intimate moments Karen Stern catalogues in her 2018 monograph, Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity. . . .

Stern . . . contrasts the modern expectation that graffiti are inherently illicit with evidence from the ancient world that suggests graffiti were often anticipated and unexceptional, albeit lacking official sanction. . . . Jewish graffiti follow certain patterns, particularly clustering around doorways, as seen in the evidence from the synagogue from Dura Europos [in what is now Syria, which dates back at least to the 3rd century CE, and is one of the oldest ever discovered]. Stern argues that this type of graffiti should be seen as a visual and physical form of prayer, which was performed not only in synagogues but in and near outdoor, non-Jewish sanctuaries, showing heterogeneity in the worship practices of Jewish populations. . . .

Stern [also] argues that the evidence shows “some ancient Jews and their neighbors commonly . . . visited and elaborated [upon] the interiors of cemeteries after they had completed activities of burial and interment.” [Additionally, the book] looks at Jewish graffiti in public spaces, such as the theater or a marketplace, which show everyday Jews interacting with and moving through a Christian or pagan world.

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.