One of the dangers of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons—cited not only by analysts, but by President Joe Biden and Senator Robert Menendez—is the prospect that other Middle Eastern countries will respond with their own race to the bomb, leaving a region filled with unstable and mercurial nuclear-armed regimes. In a recent essay in the New York Times, Peter Beinart sought to refute this line of reasoning, citing the fact that Israel has long had nuclear weapons without triggering such an arms race. Shany Mor responds:

The fact that Israel, uniquely in the world, is a state and a society that some actively wish to see eliminated—and that this elimination fantasy has been central to the worldview of various regional actors and has informed their political and ideological priorities for decades—has no place in [Beinart’s] analysis. The desire to see the Jewish presence in the Middle East wiped out, and the obsessive hatred of Jews which informs it, do not exist in Beinart’s analysis.

[Indeed], American policy makers treat the deterrent needs of Israel and Iran differently—[because] one of those is a tiny country whose elimination is a fantasy ideologically and theologically central to millions.

[And] it’s not just American presidents who understand that, but leaders of most of the global powers that have much less friendly relations with Israel, but have taken a similar approach to this issue. In fact, it is even tacitly understood by many of Israel’s neighbors. The whole point of the remarks by Menendez and Biden . . . is that an Iranian nuclear capability would engender a regional arms race, while whatever presumptions there have been about the status quo in the region have not.

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.