The Louisiana legislature is currently considering a bill that would further extend its own version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to forbid state agencies from punishing people or institutions for acting on their beliefs about marriage. Over 50 American Orthodox rabbis signed a letter in support of the measure; Gil Student explains why he joined them:

Imagine a kosher caterer that is sued for refusing to serve at a wedding on the Sabbath or a wedding-hall owner who is sued for refusing to rent the premises for an interfaith wedding. Many people interpret Jewish tradition as allowing these activities. But the government should never serve in the . . . role [of] telling people what their religion allows and forbids. No Jew, no American, should be forced to violate his deeply held religious convictions.

All people, especially minorities, need their rights protected. Ideally, when conflicts emerge between the rights of different minorities, compromises can be found that respect everyone’s needs. Alternative arrangements can often be found. However, we need laws to address those difficult cases that defy compromise. . . .

[America] must allow religion to flourish, because religious communities built this country into the great power that it is. Religious communities support the poor, provide healthy social frameworks for families, and encourage social activism.

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.