Since the early 20th century, American Jews have been primarily concentrated in the northeast. That’s now changing, especially over the last five years. Joel Kotkin explains:

Jews have been heading to Miami for decades, but today Florida’s Jewish population, barely 100,000 in 1960, stands at more than 670,000. The Jewish community in Houston grew 50 percent between 1986 and 2016, and 1,800 Jews move to the Dallas area every year. There were 9,000 Jews in Atlanta at the end of the Second World War, 60,000 in 1984, and nearly 100,000 today. In 1930, 60 percent of American Jews lived in the Northeast, compared with today’s 40 percent. The percentage of Jews living in the south has grown from 9 percent in 1960 to 22 percent today.

This geographic sea change can be seen on college campuses as well. The first- and third-largest Jewish student populations in the United States today are at the University of Florida and Central Florida University.

The Jewish move south has a variety of implications. But Kotkin suggests one strategy that could make it more likely to succeed:

Jewish communities need to prioritize cultivating ties with the established Christian communities of the south, especially Hispanics, the political kingmakers of the near future. To date, far too little attention has been paid to building these relationships, and the Jewish community has already lost ground. The city of Los Angeles and several others in California serve as cautionary tales of how susceptible migrant communities can be to anti-Semitic tropes.

Latino politicians such Valerie Amezcua, the mayor of Santa Ana, CA, and New York’s Ritchie Torres, of Puerto Rican Catholic heritage, identify deeply with the Jewish community and with the state of Israel. The growing Jewish communities of the south need to cultivate the same kinds of relationships in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere at the local and state level, and make the case for Jewish concerns and priorities. Given the ambitions, values, and trajectories of the Hispanic communities of these states, there is much opportunity for working together.

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.