A few years ago, scholars described life at an ancient copper mine in what is now Jordan as “hell on earth.” But recent research at a similar site in the Negev shows that at least one class of workers enjoyed all the creature comforts of the time. Hershel Shanks explains:

The better class . . . apparently ate like visitors at a first-class spa! The diet varied. There was fish from the Red Sea (nearly 20 miles away) and catfish from the Mediterranean Sea (125 miles away). The diners then polished it off with grapes and pistachios, also from the Mediterranean area.

All this was found on what is known as “Slaves’ Hill,” in apparent reference to the miners who worked and lived there. But this was clearly not the whole picture. In the words of researchers Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef, “These new observations . . . stand in contrast to the common perception that workers in mining areas were [uniformly] a low-class, poorly paid labor force engaged in the arduous work of mining and smelting.”

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.