On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution demanding an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza. As the UN website itself admits, “the resolution does not condemn Hamas or make any specific reference to the extremist group.” Likewise, the text speaks of “the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population,” but makes no equivalent comment about Israelis. No fewer than 153 in favor countries voted in favor.

In her speech at an October conference on the Catholic Church and anti-Semitism, Mary Eberstadt recounted her exposure to anti-Semitism while working at the U.S. mission the United Nations in the 1980s, under Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. There, she explains, she learned that hatred of Jews wasn’t merely “some harmless outpouring of ineffective malevolence,” as she had previously assumed:

Anti-Semitism, usually but not always under the guise of anti-Zionism, was the central theme sounded through that vaunted institution’s marble halls. To judge by what the representatives of many governments at the United Nations maintained in one venue after another, the most ominous problem on earth was not, say, nuclear weapons. Or the Gulag archipelago that still existed, imprisoning millions. Or that so many people around the globe knew nothing but crushing poverty and ill health. Or that terrorism was once more ascendant.

No: according to the sententious declarations of not one, but sometimes a majority, of foreign representatives, the pre-eminent threat to what was incomprehensively dubbed the “international community” was something else. One small nation—the longest-running functioning democracy in that area of the world. Which just happened to be the one and only nation run mostly by Jews.

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.