During the eras of both the First and Second Temples, Jewish sovereignty at times extended east of the Jordan River, although archaeological evidence about the details has always been scant. A new study of artifacts found near what experts think are the places the Bible calls Mahanayim and Penuel—mentioned in next week’s Torah reading and the one after, respectively—suggests the active presence of the Israelite kingdom. Ariel David reports:

Stone blocks decorated with scenes of lions and banquets, found strewn upon a hilltop archaeological site in Jordan, may have once been part of an ancient Israelite palace built some 2,800 years ago.

The incised ashlar blocks unearthed at the biblical site of Mahanaim, just east of modern Dayr Allah in Jordan, are likely remains from the time when the kingdom of Israel ruled over part of this region, the researchers say. The study . . . identifies the artifacts by comparing their iconography to drawings found at another well-known Israelite site in Sinai.

Based on the style of the decorations, the scholars date the remains to the first half of the 8th century BCE. This was the time of maximum expansion of the kingdom of Israel, which stretched from Sinai to modern-day Lebanon in the reigns of Joash and his son Jeroboam II.

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”