In 1999, the Islamic Waqf—the Jordanian-controlled organization that administers the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem—together with the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement—the Israeli chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood—decided to build a new, subterranean mosque underneath al-Aqsa. To do so, they destroyed the structure known as Solomon’s Stables, built by King Herod around the beginning of the Common Era. Israeli archaeologists have since then been trying to rescue artifacts that were displaced in the process, but their funding has recently run dry. David M. Weinberg writes:

Without any scientific supervision whatsoever, [the Waqf] bulldozed 9,000 tons of the most sensitive and valuable earth on the globe and unceremoniously dumped close to 400 truckloads of it as “garbage” in the Kidron Valley [which runs between the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives]. I have no doubt the Islamists were seeking not only to expand their prayer space but deliberately to destroy any traces of Jewish history on and under the Temple Mount.

In a bold move, the archaeologists Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Dvira of Bar-Ilan University waded into the dump, and in 2004 they started sifting it. Their initiative became the Temple Mount Sifting Project, the goal of which is to rescue ancient artifacts and to research the archaeology and history of the Temple Mount.

Over the past twelve years, it has grown into a project of international significance. With the help of nearly 200,000 volunteers, half a million valuable finds have been discovered from the First and Second Temple periods, the late-Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, and Islamic periods, and the Middle Ages. . . .

These constitute the first-ever archaeological data from below the Temple Mount. Though the artifacts have been wrenched from their archaeological context (again, nefariously), the project has used innovative methodology and survey techniques . . . to analyze the finds. . . . All of this has transformed our understanding of the history of the Temple Mount. . . .

The project needs 8 million shekels ($2.2 million) over the next four years to resume sifting of the remaining 30 percent [of the material], and to continue scientific research and publication efforts. Until now, for twelve long years, private donations and the Ir David Foundation have funded the project. Now it is time for the government to back the project generously.

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.