In the recent case of Ben-Levi v. Brown, a Jewish inmate sued a prison for denying him the right to hold a weekly Torah-study session with other Jewish prisoners. A federal court ruled in favor of the prison on grounds that fly in the face of a long-accepted principle: namely, in the Supreme Court’s formulation, that “the federal courts have no business addressing” the question of whether a person has properly understood his own religion’s doctrines. Mitchell Rocklin and Howard Slugh write:

The court, applying the test now advocated by the Obama administration [in a case, Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell, upcoming at the Supreme Court], made its own determination regarding the religious harm that Ben-Levi would suffer if denied the ability to study with other Jewish inmates. The court reached the absurd conclusion that it was actually protecting Ben-Levi’s religiosity by denying his request. According to the court, Ben-Levi had not suffered any harm because, in its view, Judaism prohibited individuals from studying together in the absence of ten men or a rabbi.

In other words, the court concluded that Ben-Levi did not deserve a religious exemption because he misunderstood his own religion. In doing so, the court acted as a religious tribunal rather than a secular court—and an incompetent one at that. No major denomination of Judaism prohibits the study in question. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision, and the Supreme Court declined to review the case. Justice Alito wrote a dissent stating that he would have taken the case and reversed the decision. He criticized the lower courts for impermissibly holding that “a plaintiff’s own interpretation of his religion must yield to the government’s interpretation.”

This case offers a clear example of the danger inherent in courts’ second-guessing plaintiffs’ religious beliefs. The district court’s interpretation of Judaism has no basis in Jewish doctrine. . . . [But the] court’s specific misunderstanding—as baffling as it may be—is mostly beside the point. The court’s confusion highlights why judges should not be in the business of deciding theological questions. That might be the role of Saudi Arabian courts, but it is not the role of the American judiciary.

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.