Whatever Israel does, it will no doubt be greeted with more libels, demonstrations, and the harassment of Jews. Into this situation comes the Nexus Project, a group led primarily by Jewish academics and rabbis, whose stated goal is to advocate “for full implementation of President Biden’s National Strategy to Counter Anti-Semitism and against the use of false accusations of anti-Semitism as political weapons.” In 2012, Nexus issued a set of guidelines for identifying when anti-Israel speech and activity should be considered anti-Semitic, which Ben Cohen described in Mosaic as “a wholly dissatisfying compromise” between two rival definitions of anti-Semitism.

Last month, Nexus produced a nine-page “Campus Guide to Identifying Anti-Semitism in a Time of Perplexity.” Cary Nelson comments:

Are you perplexed? I’m not. I’m horrified and very worried. But I’m not confused, puzzled, uncertain, or perplexed. Neither, really, is the Nexus group. It wants to be certain that the permissive spaces it made available to anti-Zionism with its February 2021 “Nexus Document” have not been curtailed or disqualified by the flood of anti-Semitism that engulfed the world following the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel.

Nexus promises “a nuanced and contextualized approach to thinking about anti-Semitism in this current moment.” Indeed, they call for a “judicious review” of meaning “in different contexts,” but then they abandon context in a futile search for intrinsic meaning. That may be the crux of the problem with what the Nexus group has done. . . . By asking for definitive proof of hateful intentions, Nexus inoculates much anti-Zionist agitation from the conclusion it is anti-Semitic. And that is exactly what the Nexus group has always wanted.

This new Nexus project is necessary because anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist statements and actions flooded the campuses and major cities of the West in the wake of the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023.

Part of the problem with Nexus’s approach is that it creates endless conversation about what is and isn’t anti-Semitic. Perhaps some people accusing Israel of heinous crimes it never committed and calling for its destruction in a sea of bloodshed aren’t motivated by hatred of Jews. Does that make them any less evil?

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.