While Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is committed to defeating the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State, which would persecute severely or even exterminate Egyptian Christians if given the chance, this ancient religious minority has hardly flourished under his rule. Samuel Tadros explains:

For the past six years, since the Muslim Brotherhood’s government was overthrown by General Sisi, Western delegations, often composed of evangelical leaders, have returned from the country telling a similar story: . . . not only is the choice in Egypt a binary one between the Islamists and Sisi but, more profoundly, Sisi is a champion of religious freedom.

But these claims, writes Tadros, are dubious, and often distort the truth. Take for instance the statement recently made in an American newspaper that a law passed by the Egyptian parliament in 2016 has allowed for the building of hundreds of new churches:

In fact, the new law makes it nearly impossible for new churches to be built in existing cities by tying their approval and space to an unspecified necessary minimum number of Christians in an unspecified area. In practice, this has meant that, in the three years since, not a single church has been approved in existing cities. Since taking power, President Sisi has approved the building of 35 new churches in new cities being built in the desert, but none in any inhabited by actual Copts. This record is worse than that of former President Hosni Mubarak.

But the plight of Copts in Egypt is not limited to church building or the lack of equality. In the past several decades, over 1,000 mob attacks have taken place on Copts in Egypt’s villages and towns. Under Sisi, the number of those attacks has increased. In none of these incidents, whether under President Anwar Sadat, Mubarak, the [period of] military rule, Muhammad Morsi, or Sisi has a single person ever faced trial. The government is always happy to try Islamists, its sworn enemies, but it has shown no interest in punishing regular Egyptians for pogroms that have terrorized Copts and have included dozens of murders.

Instead, the Sisi government continues the practice of holding reconciliation sessions. These have created a culture of impunity and encouragement that rewards the attackers by meeting their demands. The message is clear: you can attack Copts, get away with it, and be rewarded.

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.