In a case soon to be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court, the state of Missouri denied a church preschool a grant to transform discarded rubber tires into a safe surface for its playground—because the state constitution forbids giving public funds to religious institutions. Terry Eastland explains the case’s significance:

The church is making three claims: one under the First Amendment’s establishment clause, a second under its free-exercise clause, and a third under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause. It is the equal-protection argument that is most interesting. . . . [In an amicus brief], the Pacific Legal Foundation . . . argues that, while equal-protection cases “most commonly address discrimination on the basis of race,” the Supreme Court’s equal-protection decisions “reflect the view that differential treatment on the basis of religion is just as intolerable.” . . .

The foundation says that Missouri violated the U.S. Constitution by excluding [the church playground] from its Scrap Tire Program on the basis of religion. Treating people differently on the basis of race is subject to “strict scrutiny,” the Supreme Court’s “most stringent standard of review.” The Pacific Legal Foundation argues that “strict scrutiny is just as appropriate” when classifications based on religion are under review. . . .

By taking seriously unequal treatment on the basis of religion, the Pacific Legal Foundation has offered an understanding of equal protection and what it entails that is worthy of the Court’s attention.

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.