In a ruling issued last week, the Texas federal judge Robert Pitman declared a law forbidding the state to contract with businesses that boycott Israel in violation of the First Amendment. David Bernstein, calling the judge’s opinion “a mess,” exposes some of the key flaws in its legal reasoning:

First, the opinion misstates the holding of [the 1982 Supreme Court case] NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware as “recognizing that the First Amendment protects political boycott.” [But] the case actually holds that there is a First Amendment right to advocate economic boycotts, not to engage in them. If there were a First Amendment right to boycott for political reasons, then anyone politically opposed to racial integration, gay rights, and so on would have a First Amendment right to “boycott” minority groups protected by civil-rights laws. That’s in fact the implication of Judge Pitman’s opinion, and it’s hard to believe he means it. It’s even harder to believe the Supreme Court would endorse his opinion given this implication.

Second, [in the 2005 case of] Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, the Supreme Court held that law schools had no First Amendment right to boycott military recruiters in the face of a federal statute barring recipients of federal funds from discriminating against those recruiters. Pitman’s attempt to [show that this ruling does not apply to the case at hand] comes down to the fact that the Court never used the word boycott in its opinion. . . .

[But] what the law-school plaintiffs were doing was clearly within the definition of the word boycott; and the plaintiffs, in their own Supreme Court brief, themselves described what they were doing as a boycott.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.