According to its critics, Israel’s much-maligned nation-state bill aimed to deprive non-Jews of their rights. In fact, writes Zalman Shoval, its goal, in common with similar safeguards in most nation-states, was to prevent dissident minority groups from subverting the state altogether:

Not a single state gives its minorities the right to self-determination by realizing their political or national goals (although minorities often enjoy civil rights and are allowed to maintain their cultural and religious heritage). This policy is designed to prevent minorities from establishing a state-within-a-state or deciding no longer to pledge allegiance to the state’s authorities, which could ultimately lead to the disintegration of the state. . . . The final language [of Israel’s bill] was to give equal weight to the nation’s Jewish character as to the rights of its minorities. But the two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, Judaism is very compatible with democratic ideas.

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.