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A major highway linking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv has now reopened.

In Tel Aviv, where noisy anti-war demonstrations have been held for well over a year, images of the hostages are held aloft, while other protestors sit on the road, cradling pictures of Palestinian children killed during the war.

In that burn layer at Tel Halif, we found Assyrian arrowheads and ballista stones: evidence of the assault that destroyed the village in 701 BCE, part of the military campaign that the emperor Sennacherib immortalized in stone relief wall panels now displayed in the British Museum.

For me it was at Tel Halif, in southern Israel.

Like those long-gone inhabitants of Tel Halif, we saw the destruction coming — fire on the hillsides of Eaton Canyon was visible from our bedroom window.