Archaeologists have unearthed remnants of a 5,000-year-old Egyptian settlement in Tel Aviv, the northernmost Egyptian site to be discovered from that era. The site contains clear evidence of beer brewing, writes Ilan Ben Zion:

Beer was a staple of the ancient Egyptian diet, a convenient means of converting grains into storable calories, and the alcohol content, while low, made contaminated water potable. “The Egyptians drank beer morning, noon, and night,” said [excavation director Diego] Barkan. Workers building the pyramids at Giza were given a daily ration of several liters of beer each day in addition to bread. . . .

The beer vessels [found in Tel Aviv], Barkan said, were made in a fashion not usual in the local ceramic industry, and of a type similar to those found at an Egyptian administrative building at En Besor, in the northwestern Negev desert. He said that the excavation was the first evidence of Egyptian presence from the Early Bronze Age in what is today Tel Aviv.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, Israeli special forces carried out a daring boots-on-the-ground raid on September 8 targeting the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in northwestern Syria. The site was used for producing and storing missiles which are then transferred to Hizballah in Lebanon. Jonathan Spyer notes that the raid was accompanied by extensive airstrikes in Syira,and followed a few days later by extensive attacks on Hizballah in Lebanon, one of which killed Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer, a senior officer in the terrorist group’s Radwan force, an elite infantry group. And yesterday, the IDF destroyed a weapons depot, an observation post, and other Hizballah positions. Spyer puts these attacks in context:

The direct purpose of the raid, of course, was the destruction of the facilities and materials targeted. But Israel also appeared to be delivering a message to the Syrian regime that it should not imagine itself to be immune should it choose to continue its involvement with the Iran-led axis’s current campaign against Israel.

Similarly, the killing of al-Shaer indicated that Israel is no longer limiting its response to Hizballah attacks to the border area. Rather, Hizballah operatives in Israel’s crosshairs are now considered fair game wherever they may be located in Lebanon.

The SSRC raid and the killing of al-Shaer are unlikely to have been one-off events. Rather, they represent the systematic broadening of the parameters of the conflict in the north. Hizballah commenced the current round of fighting on October 8, in support of Hamas in Gaza. It has vowed to stop firing only when a ceasefire is reached in the south—a prospect which currently seems distant.