Around 720 BCE, the Assyrian empire destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and, according to Bible, sent the Ten Lost Tribes into exile, repopulating the area with exiles from other conquered lands. An excavation of the ancient city of Tel Hadid, located in central Israel, has uncovered evidence of this version of events, according to the Biblical Archaeology Society:

One document [found at Tel Hadid] is a real-estate tablet from the autumn of 698 BCE. Written in Akkadian—the native language of the Assyrian empire—all nine individuals named on the tablet (the buyer, the seller, and seven witnesses) have either Aramean or Akkadian names. Not one individual has a name [invoking the Jewish deity, such as Jeremiah, Isaiah, or Hezekiah], suggesting that the Israelites were gone. Similar Akkadian documents and seals have been found at the nearby site of Gezer.

Two seasons of excavations at Tel Hadid have uncovered buildings and artifacts that shed light on the people brought there by the Assyrians. Once archaeologists uncover the artifacts left behind, they can begin to identify who created them, who built them, and who used them. The archaeologists at Tel Hadid are also intrigued by the motivations of those forcibly resettled by the Assyrians more than 2,700 years ago.

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.