In ancient Roman cuisine, garum, a nonalcoholic fermented fish sauce, was a staple of every kitchen and a necessary ingredient of countless recipes. Archaeologists recently discovered a Roman-era factory for the condiment near Ashkelon on the Israeli coast, as Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

At the 2,000-year-old site, located a mile and a quarter northwest of the city of Ashkelon, [the Israeli archaeologist] Tali Erickson-Gini’s team uncovered several installations that, when taken together, left the archaeologist with little doubt that she was looking at a rare Holy Land garum-production center, or cetaria. Though there are few examples in the eastern Mediterranean, . . . in the Iberian Peninsula, specifically Malaga, there are several installations that mirror what she has uncovered in Ashkelon. . . .

In addition to evidence of fish pools, the team uncovered giant plastered vats, jars used for storing liquid, and what appears to be a large receptacle to hold the strained goopy substance.

While fish pools have been found elsewhere in the region, there is only one other identified location in Israel that may possibly have produced the garum, said Erickson-Gini. According to what has so far been excavated, the Ashkelon site was not a major factory, and was possibly mainly for local use. . . .

There are several types of garum, and even a strictly kosher version called garum castimonarium that was guaranteed to be made only from kosher fish.

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.