A Massive Tsunami Struck the Land of Israel 10,000 Years Ago

Nowadays, tsunamis are mostly thought of as an East Asian phenomenon, but in ancient times they are known also to have occurred in the eastern Mediterranean. Archaeologists have recently discovered a particularly massive one that hit the land of Israel. Stuart Winer writes:

The wave is believed to have struck in the area of Tel Dor—an ancient settlement site located about nineteen miles south of Haifa—between 9,910 and 9,290 years ago, which would make it the earliest known tsunami in the eastern Mediterranean.

The tsunami that was uncovered appeared to be significantly larger than other tsunamis in the area over the past 6,000 years. Most of the recorded tsunamis washed no more than a few hundred meters inland, but this wave was believed to have traveled between 1.5 and 3.5 kilometers (about 1 to 2 miles).

Researchers said the wave may be the reason that it has been surprisingly difficult to find evidence of villages or human life between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago in the area, as the tsunami may have wiped it away.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Ancient Israel, Archaeology

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF