In 2018, a pair of Israeli scientists published the results of their excavation of the Misliya cave at Mount Carmel, where they had found a skull belonging to a human who lived between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. The discovery suggested that Homo sapiens not only developed earlier than generally assumed, but also left Africa sooner. In their subsequent research into other fossils found in the same cave, the scientists have concluded that these humans arrived during the Ice Age. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

According to a new study, . . . the discovery of fossils from rodents that are only adapted to cold environments—which were found in the same archaeological assemblage as the earliest known record of Homo sapiens outside of Africa—proves that those early modern humans arrived during an Ice Age and yet were able to thrive after leaving the cradle of humankind despite the drastically cooler temperatures.

The study’s authors say the analysis contradicts the [widely accepted] theory that the Ice Age delayed human migration between continents. This first sign of human adaptability displays the characteristics that would eventually lead to our species’ world domination, said the scientists.

The region is rife with indications of paleolithic settlement . . . and during ten years of excavations, along with the jawbone, the team uncovered some 60,000 flint tools, which span the human history of development from chunky primitive hand axes to purposefully knapped, lightweight, technologically advanced projectiles, and thin knives.

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.