Earlier this week, Israeli archaeologists announced the discovery of a tusk belonging to a prehistoric elephant species at Kibbutz Revadim in the Negev desert. Michael Horovitz reports:

The 2.5-meter-long [more than eight feet] remnant of the huge straight-tusked elephant—which is now extinct—was discovered by Eitan Mor, a biologist from Jerusalem, who organized a trip to the area out of curiosity about the elephants, according to an Israel Antiquities Authority statement.

Scientists believe the elephant species, which would tower over their present-day descendants, arrived on Israel’s coastal plain about 800,000 years ago and died out approximately half a million years ago. According to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), findings from elephants are rare and the fossil is “of great scientific interest.”

The IAA explained that past archaeological work at Revadim, where stone and flint tools and other fossilized remains have been discovered, revealed that humans had settled the area and hunted the elephants that roamed the region.

The discovery of the tusk leads to questions over its presence at Revadim, according to Ofer Marder of Ben-Gurion University and Ianir Milevski of the IAA’s Prehistoric Branch. “Is the tusk the remains of a hunted elephant, or was it collected by the local prehistoric inhabitants? Did the tusk have social or spiritual significance?” the academics asked.

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.