Having just barely escaped the depredations of Islamic State, the tomb where, according to legend, the biblical prophet Nahum is buried along with his sister, is now in a dire state of disrepair. The official Jewish representative of Iraqi Kurdistan, where the tomb is now located, is trying to find support for its preservation. Tamara Zieve writes:

The tomb lies inside a synagogue in the Christian town of al-Qosh, whose doors are guarded by a Christian family who reportedly promised the town’s long-departed rabbi to safeguard it.

[But] it could be just a matter of days before the ancient tomb crumbles to its ruin. . . .

[The Jewish representative] has also appealed to UNESCO [for help] and told the Jerusalem Post he has a meeting scheduled with a representative in [the Kurdish city of] Erbil.

The Post sought comment from UNESCO, however, [and] was met with the response: “Kurdistan is not a country” and they therefore could not help.

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.