Last week, two anti-Israel activists chased the chairman of the German Left party down a corridor of the Reichstag building and into a bathroom, where the harried parliamentarian locked himself in a stall until his pursuers left. The incident brought to a head a growing conflict between those in Germany’s largest opposition party who are willing to condemn anti-Semitism and those who support the destruction of Israel. Benjamin Weinthal explains:

On the one hand, key leaders such as [party chairman Gregor] Gysi, [Petra] Pau, MP Stefan Liebich, Klaus Lederer, head of the Berlin Left party, and Matthias Höhn recognize Israel’s existence and are willing, albeit sporadically, to confront left-wing anti-Semitism within their ranks. That may not seem like progress to an objective, detached spectator. It is, however, worth recalling that the Left party is the successor to the Stalinist East German state’s Socialist Unity party, which from 1949 to its demise in 1990 had flatly rejected Israel’s right to exist.

The second camp of Left-party MPs, on the other hand, is, from Israel’s perspective, a catalogue of horrors. Höger and Annette Groth were on the Turkish Mavi Marmara vessel, which sought to break Israel’s legal blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza. Christine Buchholz supports Palestinian suicide attacks against Israel as a legitimate form of “resistance.” Party vice president Sahra Wagenknecht, Heike Hänsel, Sevim Dagdeln, and Buchholz refused to participate in a standing ovation for former president Shimon Peres on Holocaust Remembrance Day in the Bundestag, because of his role in Israel’s wars of self-defense. . . . According to critics, the war over the soul of the party will be determined only if the Left can decontaminate itself from anti-Semitism.

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.