This week’s Torah reading begins with the story of Noah, and ends with Abraham setting off on his journey to the Land of Israel—the first explicit reference to this territory in the Hebrew Bible. Judging from the biblical narrative, he lived in the first half of the second millennium BCE. Recent excavations have revealed ancient Canaanite cities even older. JNS reports:

A 5,000-year-old settlement unearthed near the central Israeli city of Beit Shemesh provides a glimpse into the beginning of the urbanization process in the ancient land of Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday.

A three-year excavation at the previously uncovered archaeological site, which was carried out ahead of planned construction work on the western edge of the city, located between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, revealed a public building that may have been used for ritual activity, along with a room with about 40 vessels preserved intact, the state-run archaeological body said.

The ancient settlement, known as Hurvat Husham, was first discovered in 2021, the IAA said, although the extent of the site and its importance in understanding the origins of the urbanization process in Israel only became clear during the excavations at the site over the last three-and-a-half years.

“The site uncovered in Hurvat Husham is exceptional not only because of its size, but because it reveals to us some of the first characteristics of the transition from village life to urban life,” the excavation managers said.

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.