Over the past century, Israeli archaeologists have discovered several ritual baths, or mikva’ot, from the Second Temple period and the subsequent centuries—important testimony to the antiquity and continuity of Jewish ritual. When one such ancient mikveh was recently discovered in the Lower Galilee near Kibbutz Hannaton, archaeologists expected to document it and then allow it to be covered up by the highway now under construction. But some of the locals objected, as Rossella Tercatin writes:

[S]ome Hannaton residents are hoping to be able to transfer the whole structure to the kibbutz and to create a small archaeological park around it. The mission especially resonated with them also because Hannaton is already home to a very special ritual bath, the only one in Israel that is open to anyone . . . regardless of religion, sex, or age.

Archaeologists could date the mikveh to the Second Temple period thanks to the grey plaster coating the pool and the width of the staircase leading into it. [They believe] that the area was then [used either for the cultivation of] olive trees or for vineyards, producing the high-quality oil or wine used in the Temple. For this reason, the ritual bath could have been used by the farmers, who needed to immerse themselves regularly in order to avoid making their produce impure. Similar cases are discussed in the Mishnah, the foundational text of rabbinic Judaism, which would be compiled in the nearby city of Tzippori (Sepphoris) some 200 years later.

[The] two archaeologists carrying out the excavation which uncovered the ancient ritual bath are Israeli Arabs—one Christian, one Muslim.

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.