At a national park last week, construction workers discovered an underground chamber filled with earthenware vessels and other items, which appear to have remained untouched for some 3,300 years. Eli Yannai, an expert on the Bronze Age with the Israel Antiquities Authority, described it as “a once-in-a-lifetime find” and compared it to “an Indiana Jones set.” Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

Yannai believes the vessels were imported from Lebanon, Syria, and Cyprus, which he said was common for burial assemblages of the era. Dozens of pottery vessels of different sizes and shapes were found, including deep and shallow bowls, some of which are painted red, some holding bones; cooking pots; jugs and clay oil lamps that still held their burnt wicks.

Other organic materials may have disintegrated over the millennia, including a likely quiver that held an array of bronze arrowheads or spearheads that were found in the cave.

Yannai dates the finds in the cave date to the 13th century BCE (Late Bronze Age IIB), or roughly the period that most date the biblical Exodus story in which Rameses II is often cast as the hard-hearted pharaoh who would not let Moses’s people go.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.