The capital city of the Spanish island of Majorca was once home to a thriving Jewish community, many of whose members converted to Catholicism in 1492 when Spain officially expelled its Jews. In recent decades their descendants have been returning to Judaism, and now the island boasts a community of some 200 souls and a synagogue, as Ayelet Mamo Shay writes:

In 1435, Palma de Mallorca’s Jewish community included some 4,000 people. Over the years it thrived and prospered, until [1492]. The Jews who did not flee . . . converted to Christianity [but] continued to observe their religion secretly, as [did other] anusim [forced converts] in Spain. In Palma de Mallorca, they were called chuetas (from the Catalan word for pigs).

One the one hand, they couldn’t live as Jews, but on the other hand, the Christians refused to accept them and treated them with much disrespect. They were humiliated and considered members of the lowest class. They were only allowed to marry among themselves, so since 1691 to this very day they have only married other descendants of anusim. . . .

Ironically, the derogatory term chuetas has become a source of pride for the descendants of anusim who are discovering their roots and seeking to return to their forefathers’ religion. Today, there are 20 to 30 [such people] on the island who are studying Jewish religious laws on a monthly basis with Rabbi Nissan Ben Avraham, an emissary of the Shavei Israel organization, who returned to the Jewish religion himself after finding out that his own family had kept the secret for many years.

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.