On the fast of the Ninth of Av, many Ashkenazi congregations recite an elegy “for the martyrs of York,” who were victims of a wave of anti-Semitic violence that swept through Britain following the coronation of Richard I. Recently uncovered evidence suggests that the beleaguered community swiftly recovered from the calamity. Rosa Doherty writes:

The tranche of information “dispels myths and challenges preconceptions” of what life was like for Jews in the years following the pogrom of 1190, when the city’s entire Jewish community was besieged inside Clifford’s Tower at York Castle by an anti-Semitic mob. The tower was burned down by locals after fabricated stories, which came to be known as the blood libel, spread that Jews were guilty of murdering Christian children and using their blood to perform religious rituals. An estimated 150 York Jews were murdered or took their own lives rather than renounce their faith.

Using documents from the Durham Cathedral Archives, academics have created digital reconstructions of the houses where the York’s most prominent Jewish citizens lived and have pinpointed the location of the city’s first synagogue. They have also traced how leading figures from the Jewish community cooperated with the senior clergy of York Minster in purchasing the large stone building which became the city’s Guildhall.

They include Leo Episcopus, his son-in-law Aaron of York, and Aaron’s nephew Josce le Jovene. Leo and Aaron were representatives of the Jewish community of England, and in the 1230s and 1240s the latter was thought to be the richest man in the country.

York recently welcomed its first resident rabbi since the expulsion of the Jews from England under King Edward I in 1290.

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.