On Wednesday, giving in only partially to pressure from the Trump administration, the Turkish government transferred the American pastor Andrew Brunson—held for two years on fictitious charges of terrorism—from prison to house arrest. Brunson fell victim to the mass detentions in the wake of the abortive coup two years ago. But he is not the only prisoner Washington should concern itself with, argue Henri Barkey and Eric Edelman: three Turkish nationals employed by the U.S. State Department have also been detained:

[Such] “foreign-service nationals” . . . form the backbone of U.S. diplomatic efforts abroad. No American embassy or consulate could operate without them. The three men have been detained in Turkey on bogus charges. Two are in jail, and one is under house arrest. As with tens of thousands of others imprisoned by the Turkish authorities in recent years, the charges against them are the product of paranoid conspiracy theories that beggar the imagination. . . .

The unwillingness of Washington to apply public pressure on Turkey to release these State Department employees sends an alarming message to the other local staff in Turkey: they are all subject to intimidation and pressure from Turkish authorities, and their employer doesn’t have their back. In effect, Turkish intelligence now has leverage over part of U.S. operations, shattering diplomatic conventions. Many of these local employees have resigned. Worse, the Turks’ actions may be copied by other authoritarian states that notice the U.S. government’s indifference.

It is quite possible that Erdogan will release Brunson [since] Turkey may soon need help from the United States, a NATO ally, if its ailing economy slides into a meltdown. Brunson’s release would be welcome, but it would also present a danger that the U.S. government would consider the matter of unjustified detentions resolved—condemning [the foreign-service employees] to years in Turkish jails.

Congress has an opportunity to play an important role here. A new U.S. ambassador to Turkey is likely to be nominated soon. The Senate should use the confirmation process to hold the administration accountable for the safety and security of all State Department employees. . . . A U.S. failure to show that it stands by its people will cripple the State Department’s ability to represent America overseas. Either foreign-service nationals are on the U.S. team, or they are not.

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.