With new regulations almost certainly aimed at hasidic schools, the New York State Education Department—which has for years been trying to interfere with hasidic education—is curbing foreign-language instruction at non-public schools. Aaron Twerski writes:

The state government permits New York public schools to teach classes in languages other than English and actively encourages dual-language learning. Some public schools even offer a 90-percent-to-10-percent model, in which a greater percentage of the instruction is in a foreign language. For parochial schools, however, an English-only rule now applies. The state’s new private-school regulations refuse to consider or credit yeshiva classes taught in any language other than English. The new regulations provide that a substantial-equivalency determination will turn, in part, on whether “English is the language of instruction for common branch subjects.” Non-public schools will not be permitted to maintain split-language programming, in which students receive non-English instruction in such subjects.

As an educator, I can tell you that this is bad policy. As a parent who chose yeshiva education for my children, I can tell you that it is a heavy-handed bureaucratic overreach. And as a law professor, I can tell you that it is unconstitutional.

Don’t take my word for it. Read what a unanimous Supreme Court ruled nearly a century ago in Pierce v. Society of Sisters: “A child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

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.