In 1963, an archaeological excavation at Masada uncovered a jar containing six ancient seeds, originating sometime between 155 BCE and 64 CE, of a now-extinct species of date palm. In 2005, a researcher planted them in Israeli soil, and one grew into a robust tree, given the name Methuselah. Diane Bolz writes:

Date palms once flourished in the Judean Valley and were an important source of food, shelter, and medicine. The palm’s fruit—the [likely source of the] honey of the “land of milk and honey”—was large, dark, and seductively sweet. Able to survive for long periods in storage, the dates were suitable for export and were used to make laxatives, aphrodisiacs, and life-prolonging tonics. There were even claims that the dates could increase fertility, ease labor, and act as a defense against infections and tumors.

The tree itself, which was praised in both the Bible and Quran, was featured on ancient coins. Today, a reproduction of an early coin picturing a date palm and two baskets full of dates appears on the front side of Israel’s ten-shekel coin. In the Bible, King David named his daughter Tamar, the Hebrew word for the palm.

When the Roman empire invaded ancient Judea, thick forests of date palms covered the valley from the Galilee in the north to the Dead Sea in the south. One of the earliest domesticated tree crops, the palms were later grown in plantations in the area. Over the centuries the Judean palm was decimated by years of war and foreign conquest. The crowning blow came some 800 years ago, when Crusaders destroyed the last remaining specimens, rendering the plant extinct.

Methuselah is male, and the researchers are trying to find a suitable female it can pollinate.

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.