The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recently upheld the decision of an Austrian court to fine Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff for the crime of “disparaging religious doctrines” after she commented on the prophet Muhammad’s supposed marriage to a six-year-old. In its decision, the ECHR stated that the Austrian courts “carefully balanced [Sabaditsch-Wolff’s] right to freedom of expression with the rights of others to have their religious feelings protected, and to have religious peace preserved in Austrian society.” Douglas Murray comments:

The first problem brought by the ECHR decision to uphold the Austrian court’s verdict against Sabaditsch-Wolff is that it means that, at least in cases of blasphemy, truth is not a defense. There is—as every Islamic scholar knows—significant evidence from [traditional Islamic texts] to allow someone to make a perfectly plausible case along the lines that Sabaditsch-Wolff did. But the courts went further. They claimed that her statements were based on “untrue facts”—whatever those might be. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this poses a serious problem for Europeans. It tells us that words we can read with our own eyes, and which are in books freely available anywhere in the world, do not say the words that they say. What are we to do? Lie? Apparently so. . . .

[Another] problem is, of course, that such a judgment hands over the decision on what is or is not allowed to be said not to a European or national court but to whoever can claim, plausibly or otherwise, that another individual has risked “the peace.” . . .

Why shouldn’t any other group in Austria other than Muslims claim, on a routine basis, that their feelings have been hurt and announce to the courts that, as a result, “peace” has been put at risk? If I were an Austrian Christian of a fundamentalist bent, I might well think about attending various lectures and sermons at a range of Austrian mosques, waiting until one of the speakers denies the divinity and resurrection of Christ and then run straight to the courts. After all, a denial of the resurrection of Christ by a Muslim could be deemed to be seriously offensive to a Christian and who is to say that “peace” will not be at risk as a result?

There is a complacency that has settled across Europe. This complacency is amply demonstrated by those happy to say that what has just happened at the ECHR is really nothing important. They are wrong. It is extremely important. Not just because it is an awful example of the morally bewildered decade we are in, but because it sets the stage horribly—for Muslims and non-Muslims—for decades to come.

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.