Israeli archaeologists recently announced the discovery of a fishing hook from the vicinity of Ashkelon, dating roughly to the time before Abraham would have come to Canaan. The Jerusalem Post reports:

The hook is 6.5 cm long and 4 cm wide, and according to the co-director of the excavation, Yael Abadi-Reiss, this makes it suitable for hunting sharks as long as two or three meters, or large tuna fish.

“More ancient fishhooks found previously were made of bone and were much smaller than this one. The use of copper began in the Chalcolithic period, and it is fascinating to discover that this technological innovation was applied in antiquity to the production of fishhooks for fishermen along the Mediterranean coast,” she added. The Chalcolithic period refers to the period of time between 2500 BCE and 2200 BCE, during which the first simple tools made of copper and gold appeared.

During this era, large villages were established around Ashkelon, whose economy was based on the pasturing of sheep, goats, and cattle; the cultivation of wheat, barley, and legumes; and the tending of fruit orchards—all industries that are still alive and thriving to this day.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.