At its 2015 annual conference, the American Historical Association (AHA) discussed, and eventually rejected, a boycott-Israel resolution similar to those circulating among other academic organizations. Jeffrey Herf, a prominent historian of the Holocaust, explains how his colleagues were dissuaded:

The AHA [was] faced with deciding between the account of [last summer’s Gaza war] offered by Israel, a liberal democracy with a thriving political opposition and free press, compared to accounts offered by Hamas, a terrorist organization which suppressed all opposition, intimidated the press and media, and whose charter repeats the falsehoods of classic Jew-hatred. . . . AHA members could not as historians render judgments about [the war]. Why would the AHA give the benefit of the doubt to Hamas rather than to Israel? If the AHA had adopted the [boycott] resolutions, the name of the American Historical Association would be associated in public with the version of events associated with Hamas, an organization justly famous for terrorism and anti-Semitism and which did not permit academic freedom to thrive under its rule.

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.