Moses Ezekiel was born into the Bene Israel Jewish community of India’s central-western coast, and eventually became the principal of a college in the Gujarat province. His granddaughter describes her discovery of a book he wrote about his coreligionists, titled History and Culture of the Bene-Israel in India.

The slim book was published on October 4th, 1948, on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, 5709. He mentions, and I quote his words: “I had visited many remote villages in the Kulaba district, for the sole purpose of collecting detailed information about this little community to which I happen to belong.” My copy of the book is very old, and the first page is torn. I think the back page, or pages, are also missing. I have now covered the book with a thick white cover to preserve it for my children and grandchildren.

At the end of the book, . . . he adds a list of education institutions run by the Bene Israel community. Among those is the school for underprivileged children, founded and run by my paternal grandmother, Diana M. Ezekiel. The school was called Vijay Vidyalaya. Loosely translated, it means “home of the victory of knowledge.” . . . I had accompanied my grandmother when she started the school with three students, renting space in a Hindu temple when it was available.

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.