An Israeli and American team of archaeologists recently discovered a collection of gold and silver items at the ruins of the Gezer, a Canaanite city located in the Judean foothills that flourished at the time of the biblical patriarchs. Dan Lavie writes:

The find includes . . . a gold-framed Egyptian seal from the Hyksos period [in the mid-second millennium BCE] and a silver medallion. The medallion consists of a silver disk on which an eight-pointed star is engraved. The disk is flanked by two thin “horns,” from which it would have connected to a rope or a chain. The archaeologist Irit Tziper said that the symbols on the disk are known to represent Canaanite gods similar to the Mesopotamian gods Ishtar and Sin. . . .

Analysis of the artifacts indicates that the trove was placed as an offering in a structure likely [meant] to synthesize Mesopotamian-Canaanite gods and Egyptian culture. The structure complex itself is part of a Middle Canaanite-period city that includes an impressive gate, a wall, and the largest Canaanite water tower known to date.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.