Among Israel’s Haredim, there is an ongoing debate about how to balance the ideal of full-time Torah study for men with the practical pressures in favor of encouraging men to join the workforce. This debate, naturally, has serious implications for the future of the Jewish state.

Among American Protestants, especially evangelicals, there is a very different debate going on about work which involves different approaches to what Max Weber famously called the “Protestant work ethic.” Reviewing a recent book on the subject, David Bahnsen has much to say that should be of interest to Jews, and other non-Calvinists—and not only about how narrowminded but trendy thinking about race, gender, and class can derail even intelligent analysts. Bahnsen argues that “a defense of a free and commercial society must be inextricably connected to a morally enlightened sentiment” that rests ultimately on a religious view of the human condition:

An economic worldview rooted in biblical anthropology is not amoral, it is not neutral on matters of incentive and knowledge, and it is not committed to impersonal or atomistic forces. While many of the conclusions reached by market-economy advocates may be compatible with [Friedrich Hayek’s ideas about economic freedom], the premises behind Christian efforts to extract beliefs and commitments in matters of social cooperation and a commercial society are entirely different from the secular humanism underlying much of contemporary capitalism.

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.