Harvard University’s Palestine Solidarity Committee recently hosted a series of events marking “Israel Apartheid Week.” As David Litman notes, many of the guest speakers celebrated Putin’s war in Ukraine even as they downplayed or defended Palestinian terrorism.

Margaret Kimberley, who spoke on Monday, has a penchant for comparing Ukrainians to Nazis, and has been regularly sharing obvious Russian propaganda on Twitter. For example, Kimberley thinks the “real Nazis are in Ukraine” and that they’re preparing “a chemical weapon false flag” attack.

Another speaker, Abbas Muntaqim, is a producer at the Iranian state news agency Press TV. Muntaqim likes to claim that “Neo-Nazis, al-Qaeda, and anarchists are all linked up fighting the Russians,” and that is “all you need to know about this Ukrainian regime.”

Noam Chomsky, [a veteran anti-American Israel-hater], who has a habit of downplaying or denying atrocities committed in places like Srebrenica and Syria, is another featured speaker. Just a few days ago, he told Ukrainians to “pay attention to the world” and to surrender to Russia’s invasion.

Unsurprisingly for an “Israeli Apartheid Week,” many of these speakers not only run interference for Russian attempts to wipe Ukraine off the map, but also condone Palestinian terrorism and Arab wars meant to wipe the Jewish state off the map. Muntaqim, for example, celebrates Iran for providing rockets and other weapons to “the Palestinian resistance.”

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.