The Hebrew Bible on several occasions describes altars as having “horns”—generally understood to be rectangular protrusions on the four corners of the altar’s surface. In the ruins of the ancient city of Shiloh, where the Bible states the Tabernacle was located for some time prior to the construction of the First Temple, archaeologists have recently discovered what seems to be the corner of a biblical-era altar, complete with horn. Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman writes:

The find, said Scott Stripling, director of excavations at Shiloh, is consistent with what he expected to find in the fields of the ancient city. . . . The group also discovered a koba’at, a goblet or ritual chalice, which could be linked to religious use.

A most exciting find at the end of summer 2018 . . . was a ceramic pomegranate. “The pomegranate is a sacred motif,” [Stripling] said. “The only sites in Israel where we have found pomegranates like this one have been Levitical sites.” The pomegranate measures between two-and-a-half and three inches and has hooks by which it could be hung. . . . Stripling said a similar pomegranate was found nearly 100 years earlier by another excavation team. The Bible describes pomegranates hanging from the bottom of the robe of the High Priest, who served in Shiloh for more than three centuries.

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.