An excavation adjacent to the site of the new U.S. embassy in Israel’s capital has uncovered what appears to be a facility for collecting and storing tax revenues, dating to the First Temple period. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

Uncovered less than two miles outside of [Jerusalem’s] Old City, the compound is believed by Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists to have served as an administrative center during the reigns of the Judean kings Hezekiah and Menashe (8th century to the middle of the 7th century BCE).

Over 120 jar handles stamped 2,700 years ago with ancient Hebrew seal impressions were discovered at the site, clearly indicating the location’s use as a storage and tax center. . . . Prevalent among the stamped inscriptions is l’melekh, “belonging to the king,” a way of marking that the foodstuffs stored in the jars had been tithed to the Judean ruler.

This trove of . . . seal impressions adds to the over-2,000 similar seals previously discovered at excavations and allows archaeologists to rethink the administrative and tax-collection systems of the kingdom of Judah.

According to the archaeologists, the large number of seal impressions here and at nearby Kibbutz Ramat Rachel shows that much of the kingdom of Judah’s governmental administration took place outside the City of David, at least during the final centuries of the monarchy.

According to the archaeologists, the site [dates] to a period during which the Bible documents tumultuous upheavals, including the Assyrian King Sennacherib’s failed campaign to conquer Jerusalem in the days of King Hezekiah. The artifacts at the site, including the stamped seals, show that taxation likely remained uninterrupted during this period.

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.