The minor Jewish holiday of Lag ba-Omer, which begins this evening, is traditionally celebrated with picnics, outings, and, nowadays, barbecues. Lenny Ben-David examines a rare photograph, which he dates to April 30, 1918, of Jerusalem schoolchildren setting out on a Lag ba-Omer field trip:

The boys and girls [in the picture’s foreground] come from ultra-Orthodox schools, evidenced by the boys’ hats and frocks. The girls are wearing ultra-Orthodox fashion: shapeless, modest smocks. [To the photographer’s left is] a second batch of girls, behind a Star of David banner, wearing more stylish dresses and hats. . . .

Traditionally, on Lag ba-Omer Jews flock to the Galilee mountaintop of Meron and to the grave there of Simon bar Yoḥai, one of the most famous scholars in the Talmud, [who lived in the 2nd century CE]. But some 100 years ago, travel to Meron would have taken days. Instead, the children took a hike to [the outskirts of Jerusalem to visit] the grave of Simon the Righteous, [the high priest and Jewish leader of the 3rd or 4th century BCE], a common custom 100 years ago in Jerusalem.

The picture was taken just four months after the British forces captured the city of Jerusalem [from the Ottoman Turks]. The city’s Jewish residents received the soldiers as their saviors—saving them from severe hunger and deadly diseases. The children had much to celebrate. . . .

Today, Lag ba-Omer is a day when Jewish children still go out to parks and forests to celebrate. In Jerusalem, many traditional Jews still visit Simon’s grave.

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.