The book of Deuteronomy described the promised land as one “of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; . . . a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.” In modern times, it has seemed more like a land conspicuously lacking in the fossil fuels that have made so many nearby countries rich. A recent government-sponsored study has taken a different approach, trying to calculate the monetary value of Israel’s natural resources. Sue Surkes explains the problems involved in performing such a calculation, and how a team of scientists tried to solve it:

How, for example, does one price an acacia tree that feeds several species of wildlife, helps to bind sandy soil, interacts with subterranean fungi and bacteria, absorbs carbon dioxide, and emits oxygen during photosynthesis?

The . . . report makes a start in attaching financial value to services (at 2015 prices), focusing on those elements—such as agricultural products, but also carbon sequestration (as absorbed by the sea)—that have a known market value. It prices these at around 7.7 billion shekels ($2.4 billion at today’s prices) a year, and says that if methods were available to value all the services, the figure would probably be closer to 122 billion shekels annually ($38 billion today), equivalent to 8 percent of GDP.

Natural vegetation that feeds cows, sheep, and goats saves farmers $83.2 million per year in feed. . . . All the water within Israel’s terrestrial boundaries—streams, springs, and the Sea of Galilee—is valued at an annual $206.7 million. Agricultural crops are worth some $1 billion a year.

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.