The Hebrew Bible presents the Canaanites as a relatively homogenous group of pagan tribes who inhabited the Land of Israel and its environs when Abraham first arrived there, and remained until the era of the Davidic monarchy. Based on ancient DNA gathered from 93 different bodies buried at nine separate locations, from a period of over a millennium, scientists have confirmed this portrait. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

“The Canaanites, although living in different city-states, were culturally and genetically similar,” said the Hebrew University ancient-DNA specialist Liran Carmel. . . . The study also discovered that they shared a genetic relationship with another group of people who slowly and continuously migrated from the far-away Caucasus and/or Zagros Mountain regions. [The latter range stretches from southwestern Turkey, through northern Iraq, and across western Iran.] This special genetic mix of Canaanite and mountain peoples can still be seen in some form in modern Arabic-speaking and Jewish populations, wrote the authors.

In Carmel said that Bronze Age (circa 3500-1150 BCE) populations in the southern Levant—today’s Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of Syria—were not static. “Rather, we observe evidence for the movement of people over long periods of time from the northeast of the Ancient Near East, including modern-day Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, into the southern Levant region,” he said.

Even though Canaanites lived in different city-states, archaeological evidence has always suggested that they presented a common material culture. And indeed, as the paper explained, this homogeneity was found mirrored also in their genetic ancestry.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.