Near the beginning of this century, the Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar hypothesized that the remains of King David’s palace were likely located in the area of Jerusalem known as the City of David, adjacent to the Temple Mount. Eventually, despite the skepticism of her colleagues in the field, she began dig. She died last May at the age of sixty-four, having changed scholars’ understanding of Iron Age Jerusalem. Roger Hertog writes:

Some archaeologists have argued that David and his predecessor, Saul, were merely “tribal chieftains” with hilltop strongholds rather than kingdoms, thus relegating the Jews of that era to the status of just one of several nomadic groups in the region. . . . Eilat . . . never engaged in a real conflict with any of them. She would only say “Let the stones speak for themselves.” Time and scholarship will tell the story.

She was convinced that a passage in the book of Samuel contained clues to a palace in the northern part of Jerusalem’s oldest area. She was also inspired by the work of the British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, who in the 1960s discovered in that area what she believed to be a wall built by King Solomon, dating to the 10th century BCE.

Eilat’s enthusiasm was contagious. Sure enough, her team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she was a professor, quickly began to unearth treasures. I recall the first excited call in which she reported artifacts from the 4th to 7th centuries BCE, including one bearing the name of Yehukhal, a figure mentioned in the biblical book of Jeremiah.

In August of 2005, Eilat announced her belief that what would come to be called the Large Stone Structure, in close proximity to the Stepped Stone Structure excavated by Kenyon decades earlier, was part of King David’s palace. She argued that the two sites were once part of a single complex, and that it made sense that the palace might be outside the protective walls of Jerusalem due to the city’s increasing expansion.

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.