Yesterday, a federal court upheld an Arkansas law prohibiting state agencies from doing business with companies that boycott Israel. The law had been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is also fighting similar laws in other states, and will no doubt do the same if Congress passes the currently proposed federal version. In Arizona, the ACLU won an injunction against such a measure; the case is now being heard by a federal appellate court. Alyza Lewin explains why, contrary to the ACLU’s claims, these laws do not violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech:

Federal, state, and local governments across the United States regularly and appropriately use conditions in government contracts to promote equality under the law, combat discrimination, and ensure that public funds are not used for illegal or invidious purposes. Conditions on contracting are a pillar of anti-discrimination laws at all levels of government. The First Amendment does not require the government to subsidize discriminatory conduct.

However, these regulations only target discriminatory conduct, not speech, by state contractors. Contractors may speak passionately, associate, and advocate openly in any forum and on any subject, even an anti-Israel boycott. They may also forgo state contracts if they choose to engage in an active boycott of Israel.

The ACLU’s position rests on a perverse interpretation: . . . that the government must subsidize discriminatory conduct. Such a rule is not required—or even supported—by the First Amendment. It conflicts with a deeply embedded web of federal, state, and local anti-discrimination laws. Government must have the power to discourage discriminatory boycotts by prescribing non-discrimination conditions in government contracts.

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.