Monday marked the anniversary of a 1391 pogrom on the Spanish-ruled island of Majorca in which some 300 Jews were killed and many others forcibly baptized. In recent times, many of their descendants returned to Judaism:

Jewish habitation on Majorca ebbed and flowed with the whims of the island’s rulers, who were caught up in the intrigues of the Spanish crown, but among the Jews were influential merchants, money-lenders, and slave-traffickers, whose value to the ruling class of Spain often led to their protection.

The massacre on Majorca was matched by persecutions on the Spanish mainland, and would resume with further violence in 1413 and 1435. Ultimately, Jews were either driven from Majorca or into life as “New Christians” and secret Jews. In 2011, Francesc Antich, the regional president of the Balearic Islands, issued an official condemnation and apology for the killings—the first of its kind in Spain—and Rabbi Nissim Karelitz, head of the rabbinical court in Bnei Brak, recognized the Chuetas, descendants of these persecuted Jews (who number close to 15,000), as Jewish.

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.