SUBSTACK
The Tape That Just Ended Mahmoud Abbas
Hen Mazzig
April 17, 2026

…I have spent years being told, in every Western capital where I am invited to speak, that the Palestinian cause is the conscience of the Arab world. This month, the Arab world watched Hamas refuse to lift a finger for the regime that armed it for twenty years, and watched the president of the Palestinian Authority laugh at the destruction of the country that has paid his civil servants’ salaries for most of his presidency. Therein lies the conscience of the Arab world. Iran will punish Hamas quietly, the way Tehran punishes proxies who disappoint it: a late transfer, a missed shipment, a Quds Force contact who stops returning calls. The Saudis will decide what to do with Abbas, and my guess is that Mohammed bin Salman is already running the arithmetic on whether it is easier to replace the old man than to reform him. Saudi-Israeli normalization is back on the table, and MBS is not the kind of ruler who lets a man with a recording problem sit across the table of the deal that reshapes the region. READ MORE

FUTURE OF JEWISH Hen Mazzig: Israel’s Independence Day is no longer just for Israelis. The safest Jews in the world right now are the ones living in Israel. They have 177,000 babies a year. They post happy reels set to Hebrew songs. The Jews who are not safe are in London and Paris — the ones with the mezuzah tucked behind the doorframe so it isn’t visible from the corridor, the ones who take their Star of David off before riding the tube. Jews in Israel live in a country where people who try to kill them are mostly from the outside. Jews in the Diaspora live in countries where we are told, politely and then less politely, that our discomfort is our own fault for having the wrong opinions about the one Jewish state, four thousand kilometres away.