The Hebrew term lilith seems to have originally referred to a winged demon that preyed upon pregnant women and infants. During the Middle Ages, a legend—which had probably existed in some form for centuries—appears in Jewish sources to the effect that Lilith was Adam’s original wife, exiled from the Garden and replaced by Eve; eventually this story entered Christian mythology as well. Megan Sauter summarizes the recent scholarship about the story’s origins:

The creation of humans is described in the first two chapters of Genesis. The first account is fairly straightforward: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). The second account describes how God formed man out of the dust of the ground and then creates woman [later given the name Eve] from the man. . . .

In the post-biblical period, some ancient Jewish scholars took the stance that Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:21–22 must describe two separate events, since it appears that woman is created differently in these accounts. . . . Accordingly, Genesis 1:27 describes the creation of Adam and an unnamed woman (Lilith); Genesis 2:7 gives more details of Adam’s creation; and Genesis 2:21–22 describes the creation of Eve from Adam.

Lilith’s creation is recounted in the Tales of Ben Sira, an apocryphal work from the 10th century CE. [The scholar] Dan Ben-Amos explains that although this is the first extant text that records the legend of Lilith, her story probably existed earlier.

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.