While the ancient history of the Galilee, the Judean Hills, and other parts of the Land of Israel are fairly well known, few are aware of the once-thriving Jewish community in the Gaza Strip. In a recent Hebrew book on the subject, the Israeli journalist Haggai Hoberman tells the story of Jewish life in Gaza from biblical times to the present. Nadav Shragai shares some of its surprising findings:

Gaza . . . was conquered by King Jonathan the Hasmonean in 145 BCE; it is mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud in the 4th century CE; Nathan of Gaza, [the “prophet” of the false messiah Shabbetai Tsvi] declared him “the savior of Israel” in the synagogue of Gaza City in 1660.

There is also the rabbi and poet Israel Najara, who was the chief rabbi of Gaza for five years until he died in 1625. He was the son of the Safed rabbi Moses Najara, who was one of the students of [the famed kabbalist] Isaac Luria. Israel Najara wrote some 650 poems, both secular and religious, some of which have never been seen in print.

Najara’s Aramaic hymn, Yah Ribon, remains a favorite at Sabbath tables today. But perhaps the most surprising episode in Gazan history came with the return of Jews there at the end of the 19th century:

Gaza was home to Islamic religious leaders who were no less devout than those of our time, but different. . . . Who would believe that only 110 years ago, then-chief rabbi of Gaza Nissim Binyamin Ohana, and then-mufti of Gaza Sheikh Abdullah al-Alami, co-authored a book? [Moreover], the children of Gaza—Jews and Arabs—liked to wear daggers embellished with locally produced beads. On Muslim holidays, [the local Zionist leader] Avraham Elkayam would take part in horseback and wrestling competitions. “We purposely lost to the Bedouin, lest they be offended,” the Jews of Gaza would later recall.

In 1921, when news of the rioting in Jaffa spread, the Jews of Gaza decided not to test their relations with the local Arabs and left the city, even though Mufti Hajj Said al-Husseini . . . begged them not to. He promised no one would harm them. Only when things calmed down did the Jews return.

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.