The PA president may not believe in the murderous ideology of Hamas, and he has proved willing to cooperate with Israel in preventing terrorist attacks emanating from the West Bank; but, writes David Keyes, he is no moderate, much less a benign influence, and:

Abbas, if one listens to leaders of the free world, is a moderate, reformer, and ally. He is better than Hamas, after all, isn’t he? Never mind that Abbas said in 2013, “There is no difference between our policies and those of Hamas.” The point is this: being better than a genocidal terrorist organization does not a “moderate” make. Pretending it does demeans the word. It is condescending to Palestinians and insulting to true moderates. . . .

Under Abbas’s rule, the Palestinian Authority has arrested activists for Facebook posts and jailed atheists. Two weeks ago, a twenty-two-year-old student was imprisoned for insulting the head of the Palestinian soccer federation. Torture is rampant and Abbas refuses to hold elections, even though his term expired six years ago. . . .

Next to issues like war and peace, civil society and Internet freedom can seem quaint and unimportant. This is a grave mistake. The free exchange of ideas is the bedrock of public reasoning and social progress. It is also a bulwark against extremism. But how can moderate voices succeed if they are always silenced?

A modest solution is to begin by using the West’s immense political and economic leverage to encourage real democratic reform in the Palestinian Authority. Right now, the United States supplies about 10 percent of the PA’s annual budget of over $4.2 billion, yet reform has been cosmetic at best.

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.