At the foot of the Mount of Olives, near the church of Gethsemane—the garden where, according to the New Testament, the Romans arrested Jesus—archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old mikveh, or ritual bath. The garden’s name derives from the Hebrew words meaning “oil press,” and this is exactly what experts believe existed there once. In an interview by Hannah Brown, Amit Re’em, the director of archaeology in Jerusalem for the Israel Antiquities Authority, explains:

The discovery of the ritual bath probably confirms the place’s ancient name, Gethsemane. Most ritual baths from the Second Temple period have been found in private homes and public buildings, but some have been discovered near agricultural installations and tombs, in which case the ritual bath is located in the open.

The discovery of this bath, unaccompanied by buildings, probably attests to the existence of an agricultural industry here 2000 years ago—possibly producing oil or wine. The Jewish laws of purification obliged workers involved in oil and wine production to purify themselves. The discovery of the ritual bath may therefore hint at the origin of the place’s ancient name, Gethsemane, a place where ritually pure oil was produced near the city.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].