After 30 years of digging at the Israeli city of Ashkelon, archaeologists have discovered a massive 3,000-year-old burial site that sheds light on the ancient enemies of the Israelites. Ilan Ben Zion writes:

The discovery of a sizable cemetery, where [the remains of at least] 210 individuals [have been identified], at a site conclusively linked to the Philistines, is a “critical missing link” that allows scholars “to fill out the story of the Philistines,” said [Daniel] Master, a professor of archaeology at Wheaton College [and the director of the excavation].

The cemetery, discovered just outside the ancient city walls and dated to between the 11th and 8th centuries BCE—a period associated with the rise of the Israelites—may contain the remains of thousands of individuals, providing an abundance of material to study. . . . With that broad a population, “we’re going to be able to reconstruct what the Philistines as a group were like,” Master said. . . .

Ashkelon was one of the five main Philistine cities . . . from the 12th century BCE until its destruction by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar’s army in 604 BCE.

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.