Discovered in a 1st-century-CE synagogue on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, the Magdala stone is a rectangular block not much bigger than most microwave ovens. One side is engraved with a menorah—the earliest such depiction ever found in a synagogue—and other objects from the Temple; the opposite side is engraved with wheels in an apparent reference to the angelic beings described as surrounding the divine chariot in the book of Ezekiel. Engraved on the other two sides are gates, perhaps those of the Temple or the gates of heaven. Since archaeologists agree that both the synagogue and the stone predate the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the artifact has special significance. Lawrence Schiffman presents his own interpretation:

There appear to be flat, indented areas on [the stone’s] four top corners that could have supported poles. It has been suggested that this object was the base for what was then called a teyvah (a “chest”), the ancient synagogue furnishing that served both to hold the Torah scroll [like a modern-day ark] and as a lectern upon which it could be read. This beautiful object would have been part of a synagogue furnished and decorated more extensively than any other from the 1st century CE that has been excavated in Israel.

But this stone has an enormous significance, way beyond its beauty and rarity. It is the earliest post-biblical evidence we have for the notion that a synagogue is a mikdash m’at, a “small sanctuary,” a [talmudic description] drawn from Ezekiel (11:13), where it refers to God. Specifically, the decision to decorate the base of the teyvah on which the Torah was read with symbols of the Temple [implies] that the synagogue was intended to function as a local, admittedly less sanctified, version of the Temple. This object was decorated richly with such symbols to show that the prayer, Torah reading, and study that occurred in this building were likened to the sacrifices offered in the Temple. What this means is that the concept of the synagogue as a replacement for the Temple did not come into existence as a reaction to the latter’s destruction; rather, for [those] Jews who lived too far away to visit Jerusalem regularly, it existed long before.

Yesterday, the head of the Shin Bet—Israel’s internal security service—was in Washington meeting with officials from the State Department, CIA, and the White House itself. Among the topics no doubt discussed are rising tensions with Iran and the possibility that the latter, in order to defend its nuclear program, will instruct its network of proxies in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and even Iraq and Yemen to attack the Jewish state. Oved Lobel explores the history of this network, which, he argues, predates Iran’s Islamic Revolution—when Shiite radicals in Lebanon coordinated with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s movement in Iran:

An inextricably linked Iran-Syria-Palestinian axis has actually been in existence since the early 1970s, with Lebanon the geographical fulcrum of the relationship and Damascus serving as the primary operational headquarters. Lebanon, from the 1980s until 2005, was under the direct military control of Syria, which itself slowly transformed from an ally to a client of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The nexus among Damascus, Beirut, and the Palestinian territories should therefore always have been viewed as one front, both geographically and operationally. It’s clear that the multifront-war strategy was already in operation during the first intifada years, from 1987 to 1993.

[An] Iranian-organized conference in 1991, the first of many, . . . established the “Damascus 10”—an alliance of ten Palestinian factions that rejected any peace process with Israel. According to the former Hamas spokesperson and senior official Ibrahim Ghosheh, he spoke to then-Hizballah Secretary-General Abbas al-Musawi at the conference and coordinated Hizballah attacks from Lebanon in support of the intifada. Further important meetings between Hamas and the Iranian regime were held in 1999 and 2000, while the IRGC constantly met with its agents in Damascus to encourage coordinated attacks on Israel.

For some reason, Hizballah’s guerilla war against Israel in Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s was, and often still is, viewed as a separate phenomenon from the first intifada, when they were in fact two fronts in the same battle.

Israel opted for a perilous unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, which Hamas’s Ghosheh asserts was a “direct factor” in precipitating the start of the second intifada later that same year.