Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the high rabbinic council known as the Sanhedrin relocated from Jerusalem to the Galilee, where it migrated from one place to another, spending a number of years in the village of Usha during the 1st and 2nd centuries. At the site of this village, volunteers participating in an archaeological dig recently discovered a hammer and nails dating to the 6th century, not long before Jews abandoned it altogether. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

According to Yair Amitzur and Eyad Bisharat, co-directors of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “about twenty iron hammers are registered in the Israel Antiquities Authority records, only six of them from the Byzantine period,” [to which this one is dated]. Through their excavations, the archaeologists had previously discovered an extensive glass industry—from raw material to beautifully finished green-blue glass goblets—as well as wine and olive-oil production at the site.

Amitzur [added] that the iron-production center would have forged everything the community needed on a day-to-day basis, including nails and little rings. There would have been a smithy working in every village, he said, but the remains indicate that Usha’s was a very small operation.

A famous resident of Usha recorded in Jewish sources was Rabbi Yitzḥak Nafḥa. The word “Nafḥa” comes from the root “to blow,” and in rabbinic-period Hebrew can mean “blacksmith.” But Amitzur [believes] that the iron industry was not in operation during the period in which the famous rabbi lived there, and he associates the word with the extremely specialized glass industry at the site, due to the uniqueness in the quality and quantity [of glass items] found there.

The site and its ritual baths continued to be used by the local Jewish population until approximately 1,500 years ago, said Amitzur, at which time the Jews filled in the baths to invalidate them for use prior to leaving the village.

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.