Last week, a block of stone weighing over 200 pounds was dislodged from the Western Wall, falling dangerously close to a worshipper. The causes of the accident are unclear, but David M. Weinberg raises a troubling possibility:

It’s possible, say scientists and archaeologists, that the stone was weakened from its moorings by water that seeped through the soil fill behind the wall or by vegetation growing within the wall itself. But it is also possible that the waqf, the Muslim religious trust that oversees the Temple Mount, caused the near catastrophe [with its] illegal digging projects and unsupervised underground renovations on the Temple Mount. . . .

The Israel Antiquities Authority plans a scan of the southern and eastern sections of the Temple Mount walls, but it has not yet been carried out because everything related to the Temple Mount is diplomatically sensitive. The mere agreement on who is responsible for inspecting and fixing stones is in itself complicated. . . .

The troubles began in 1999, when the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel and the waqf violently and illegally plowed with heavy machinery into the ground below the al-Aqsa mosque to turn [the ancient structure called] “Solomon’s Stables” into a vast underground prayer area, now known as el-Marwani mosque. Without any scientific supervision whatsoever, they bulldozed 9,000 tons of the most valuable dirt on the globe and unceremoniously dumped close to 400 truckloads of it as “garbage” in the Kidron Valley. It’s clear the Islamists were seeking not only to expand their prayer space but purposefully to destroy any traces of Jewish history on and under the Mount.

Furthermore, the waqf has proclaimed its intent to turn the whole Temple Mount plaza—a vast compound—into a prayer zone, thereby precluding any possibility in the future of allocating even a small corner for Jewish prayer. . . . And last month, under the cover of Ramadan (when non-Muslims are banned from the Temple Mount and Israeli police take a step back), hundreds of Muslims actively began picking through the supposedly protected rubble, taking stones to build terraces. . . .

Israel should act with determination to counter Palestinian-Islamic aggression against Jewish history in Jerusalem, and, of course, ensure the stability of Temple Mount walls.

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.