Using cutting-edge techniques of machine learning and computerized image processing, a group of Israeli scientists and archaeologists have examined the Hebrew handwriting of a group of clay fragments from the early 8th century BCE known as the Samaria ostraca. Amanda Borschel-Dan reports on their findings:

The Samaria ostraca are a collection of over 100 pottery pieces upon which are recorded a few words of biblical Hebrew. . . . The ostraca were thoroughly recorded by a 1910 Harvard Semitic Museum expedition, and the new study is based on digitally enhanced scans of the Harvard negatives.

The few words etched on the small clay pieces found in [what is now] Nablus record commodities: which containers held what, from which region and clan, and when . . . they were brought to the ancient city. For example, [one] piece states: “In the year ten from Hazeroth to Gaddiyau jar of bath oil.”

Through these meager words, rare early examples of Iron Age, paleo-Hebrew script, linguists have already learned that those who wrote them used a dialect of biblical Hebrew, today called the northern dialect, which was different from that spoken in the kingdom of Judah. Although the same language, words were pronounced differently and different word constructions were used.

The study concluded that the same two scribes wrote the 39 ostraca examined thus far. While this suggests limited literacy during this time, which is thought to have been the peak of the northern kingdom’s prosperity, Israel Finkelstein—a distinguished archaeologist and one of the study’s coauthors—notes that climate conditions meant that fewer texts have been preserved from this period in contrast to others.

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.