Examining clay vessels discovered in the ruins of ancient city of Abel Beth Maacah, archaeologists were surprised to find a one-word Hebrew inscription. The Times of Israel reports:

On [one] jar, believed to be a wine vessel, was simply written: “l’Benaya’u,” meaning “belongs to Benaya’u.” But that single word could lead experts to rethink their views on the territory of the ancient kingdom of Israel.

Abel Beth Maacah, mentioned in the Bible, is located just south of Israel’s border with Lebanon, near the modern-day town of Metula. Benaya’u is a Hebrew name analogous to the modern Benayahu. But while the pot is believed to be from the 9th or 10th century BCE, the kingdom of Israel had not previously been thought to stretch so far north during that period.

At the time, Abel Beth Maacah was situated in a liminal zone between three regional powers: the Aramean kingdom based in Damascus to the east, the Phoenician city of Tyre to the west, and the Israelite kingdom, with its capital in Samaria, to the south. Archaeologists had previously believed the area of the town was largely empty during the 10th-9th century BCE, and that it only came under Israelite rule during the 8th century BCE.

The earlier date would suggest an Israelite presence in the city during, or at last closer to, the reigns of David and Solomon.

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.