Not long after entering the land of Canaan, according to the book of Joshua, the Israelites sacked the city of Hazor, whose king exercised power over other local potentates. The celebrated general-cum-archaeologist Yigael Yadin first excavated the city’s ruins in the 1950s, but the site continues to be studied. A recent dig unearthed a gigantic basalt staircase from the Canaanite period, thought to be part of a palace complex. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

Located north of the Sea of Galilee on a trade route connecting Egypt and Babylon, Hazor was [among] the largest biblical-era sites in Israel. With an estimated population of 20,000, its size and strategic location made it an important city in antiquity. After its fiery destruction, it was rebuilt by the Israelites, perhaps by King Solomon. Several hundred years later, the Israelite settlement was destroyed by the Assyrians under Tiglath-Pileser III in 732 BCE.

[T]he remains of the last Israelite settlement of Hazor were also uncovered this year, including a considerable quantity of shattered pottery vessels — evidence of its destruction.

[The excavation’s co-director Shlomit] Bechar said that while the stairs, strangely modern in appearance, are grand in their own right, it is quite possible that they are not the staircase into the [main] palace but rather lead to another courtyard, which could then lead to another large staircase.

Alongside the finely worked black stone steps, there is also significant archaeological evidence of the large conflagration that destroyed the Canaanite settlement. Bechar said the building, constructed in the 13th century BCE, existed for 200 to 250 years.

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.