For nearly a decade, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) has been engaged in a struggle with a group of hasidic schools, which it seeks either to shut down or to compel to modify their curricula to teach secular subjects more thoroughly. The last round in this battle occurred in June, when a state appellate court ruled in favor of NYSED’s regulations, while accepting previous rulings that educational requirements apply to parents, not schools themselves. Michael A. Helfand zeroes in on one particular aspect of the ruling:

Buried in it is an odd, somewhat unexplained limitation—that the court’s ruling applies only to schools with exceedingly long school days—that raises questions about the scope of NYSED’s newfound authority.

The underlying assumption of this caveat, which seems to single out hasidic schools, is that parents could supplement their children’s education if they are spending a normal amount of time in school, but there will be no time to do so if the school day is abnormally long. Helfand continues:

This argument is deeply problematic. Government may have the authority, indeed the obligation, to ensure that children receive a basic education that prepares them for economic self-sufficiency and the responsibilities of democratic citizenship. But parents retain a right, consistent with that obligation, to determine how they satisfy that obligation. Put differently, government may have an overriding interest to ensure that children receive an adequate education, but government has no overriding interest—sufficient to constrain parents’ statutory and Fourteenth Amendment right to control their child’s upbringing—to require that parents satisfy those objectives through only one source.

One can easily imagine the plaintiffs raising this apparent tension as grounds for an appeal to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. . . . At bottom, by adopting the fundamental argument that satisfying the “substantial equivalency” standard is a parental obligation, the appellate court’s decision may have simply kicked the can down the road. It may take another round of litigation before we reach the end of this story.

How did Qatar, an American ally, become the nerve center of the leading Palestinian jihadist organization? Natalie Ecanow explains.

When Jordan expelled Hamas in 1999, Qatar offered sanctuary to the group, which had already become notorious for using suicide-bombing attacks over the previous decade. . . . Hamas chose to relocate to Syria. However, that arrangement lasted for only a decade. With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the terror group found its way back to Qatar.

In 2003, Hamas leaders reportedly convened in Qatar after the IDF attempted to eliminate Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, following a Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed seven people, including two American citizens. This episode led to one of the first efforts by Qatar to advocate for its terror proxy.

Thirteen years and five wars between Hamas and Israel later, Qatar’s support for Hamas has not waned. . . . To this day, Qatari officials maintain that the office came at the “request from Washington to establish indirect lines of communication with Hamas.” However, an Obama White House official asserted that there was never any request from Washington. . . . Inexplicably, the United States government continues to rely on Qatar to negotiate for the release of the hostages held by Hamas, even as the regime hosts the terror group’s political elite.

A reckoning is needed between our two countries. Congressional hearings, legislation, executive orders, and other measures to regulate relations between our countries are long overdue.