The book of Lamentations (Eikhah in Hebrew), read in synagogue on Tisha b’Av, consists of five chapters. Four of them are structured as alphabetical acrostics; that is, each verse starts with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet starting with aleph and proceeding in order. In three of these chapters, however, one letter is out of place: the letter peh proceedes ayin—the equivalent of p preceding o. Mitchell First suggests a possible explanation:

In 1976, a potsherd was discovered at Izbet Sartah in Western Samaria, dating to about 1200 BCE. The potsherd had five lines of Hebrew writing on it, one of which was an abecedary (an inscription of the letters of the alphabet in order). In this abecedary, the peh preceded the ayin. There is a scholarly consensus that Izbet Sartah was an Israelite settlement in this period. . . .

[In all other] abecedaries . . . that have [subsequently] been discovered in ancient Israel, dating from the period of the Judges and the First Temple and spanning the letters ayin and peh, peh precedes ayin in every one! . . . [T]hese abecedaries come from different regions in ancient Israel, not merely from one limited area. All of this suggests that peh preceding ayin was the original order in ancient Israel.

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.