Historians have long supposed that the Philistines—the perennial enemies of the Israelites in the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel—came to Canaan’s Mediterranean coast via the sea from various hypothetical points of origin. Thanks to a recent study of Philistine DNA, strong evidence now suggests that those proposing a departure point in southern Europe were correct. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

In [a recent scientific article], an interdisciplinary team of scholars from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon proves that, coinciding with the arrival of the Philistines in Ashkelon in the 12th century BCE, there was an influx of southern European genetic material into the local population. DNA analysis was completed on samples from three periods within the Bronze and Iron ages (approximately 3,600–2,800 years ago) from remains of Canaanites and early and late Philistines, which were taken from three sites: a Philistine cemetery discovered in 2016, graves discovered in the 1990s, and infant burials uncovered under Philistine homes.

The Philistines’ ancestors, said Daniel Master, [the head archaeologist involved in the study], left their southern Mediterranean homelands during a time of flux: it was the [putative] period of the Trojan War; with the collapse of the “heroic empires” in the 13th and 12th centuries BCE, these Philistine migrants sought a new life in a new land. They primarily settled in five cities—Ashkelon, Gaza, Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron—along or close to the southern coast of modern Israel. “They are survivors who set up a new life for themselves, which lasted for six centuries,” said Master.

With the new DNA study, researchers are getting ever closer to pinpointing the Philistines’ exact origins, but require more ancient DNA samples from the Aegean to provide a precise location. Cautious not to overreach from the study’s general impressions, Master said that there are “better matches from Crete,” emphasizing that until there are more samples available, “at the moment we cannot prove the specific location whence they came.”

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.