Having just barely escaped the depredations of Islamic State, the tomb where, according to legend, the biblical prophet Nahum is buried along with his sister, is now in a dire state of disrepair. The official Jewish representative of Iraqi Kurdistan, where the tomb is now located, is trying to find support for its preservation. Tamara Zieve writes:

The tomb lies inside a synagogue in the Christian town of al-Qosh, whose doors are guarded by a Christian family who reportedly promised the town’s long-departed rabbi to safeguard it.

[But] it could be just a matter of days before the ancient tomb crumbles to its ruin. . . .

[The Jewish representative] has also appealed to UNESCO [for help] and told the Jerusalem Post he has a meeting scheduled with a representative in [the Kurdish city of] Erbil.

The Post sought comment from UNESCO, however, [and] was met with the response: “Kurdistan is not a country” and they therefore could not help.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].