An animal-rights group has filed suit against four rabbis, several ḥasidic congregations, and the city of New York to stop ultra-Orthodox Jews from performing the pre-Yom Kippur ritual of kapparot, in which a chicken is ritually slaughtered and then donated to a poor family for consumption. The plaintiffs allege that the ritual involves cruelty to animals and constitutes a public-health hazard. Wesley Smith addresses the constitutional questions the suit raises:

[T]here is no question that the animal rightists seek to interfere with the free exercise of religion. But that is not the end of our inquiry. Does the government have a compelling state interest in preventing this ritual slaughter? Perhaps. . . .

[The] allegations [made in the suit] are sufficiently serious and weighty to warrant a thorough investigation, both as to the animal-cruelty and public-health issues. I don’t have an opinion on the “correct” answer. Free exercise of religion is not an absolute right, but the burden of proof should be on those who would interfere with religious freedom. . . . [But those] who don’t care about the religious angle should never call themselves civil libertarians. Any “civil libertarian” who doesn’t defend the free exercise of religion is no civil libertarian.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.