Reinterpreting Religious Freedom, Obama-Style

The Justice Department is currently pushing an approach to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that, according to Howard Slugh and Mitchell Rocklin, would turn judges into interpreters of religious doctrine and thereby undermine accepted understandings of religious freedom:

The RFRA requires the government to demonstrate the compelling nature of any law that would place a substantial burden on a person’s religious exercise. This leads to the inevitable question of what constitutes a “substantial burden.” . . . Religious plaintiffs have argued that the test requires courts to weigh the burden of the punishment a religious person may face for refusing to violate his faith, rather than the importance of the religious practice at issue. . . The administration rejects this view, arguing that a judge must “look at the [religious] action that the plaintiffs want to take.” . . . According to this view, if a court decides that a particular religious principle is unimportant, the state can force a believer to choose between violating it and facing a draconian punishment. . . .

[S]uch a test would inevitably ensnare courts in thorny doctrinal questions. . . . A government that adjudicates the relative merits of religious commandments has invaded the most central and sacred sphere of life, usurping the role of ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams.

Read more at National Review

More about: American politics, Barack Obama, Freedom of Religion, Hobby Lobby, Politics & Current Affairs, Religious Freedom Restoration Act

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF