Last month, Israeli archaeologists discovered some important artifacts in the town of Itamar in Samaria. The most important, a silver coin from era of the Hasmoneans—the priestly dynasty, established by Judah the Maccabee, who ruled an independent Judea from about 140 to 37 BCE. Efrat Forsher writes:

The coin was minted in the city of Tyre in modern-day Lebanon, . . . in the time of Seleucid king Demetrius II and the high priest John Hyrcanus.

The excavation has also revealed a Second Temple-era stone structure; a sealed cistern that had never been opened, which contained tools and vessels assessed to be some 2,000 years old, including cooking pots; as well as an olive press, a mikveh, and a bronze Roman coin minted in Nablus (Shechem) in the middle of the 3rd century CE. The coin is imprinted with an image of Mount Gerizim, [the site of ritual described in the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua].

According to researchers, the finds indicate the former presence of a rural community that reached its peak between the end of the Second Temple and Roman periods.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.