Whatever point Iran had hoped to make by holding a competition for offensive Holocaust cartoons seems to have been lost on its own people. The cartoons, which have been on display at a museum in Teheran since August, have drawn sparse crowds, and Iranian newspapers have declined to publish the winning entries. The cartoons were somehow a response to the Danish cartoon controversy, trying to prove, perhaps, that all societies have limits on self-expression. Instead, what the display has proved is the very opposite — Western society may deplore certain messages, but its citizens tend not to riot and murder in response to them.

Jews have also responded appropriately, when they bothered to respond at all. Defense groups released angry press releases, not mobs. Effigies of Ahmadinejad do not burn in the streets of Brooklyn, nor have angry rabbis exhorted the faithful to violence. That restraint is to the credit of the Jewish community.

But such restraint is being tested in the streets of Jerusalem, where plans for a gay pride march set for Friday have been met with violence from members of the city’s fervently Orthodox neighborhoods. Riots have broken out nearly every night over the past week, as haredi youth burn trash cans, barricade roads, and attack police officers in an attempt to get the authorities to call off the march.

Like the parade’s route itself, the march cuts through the heart of the Jewish community, with one side vehemently opposed to an identity that flouts their interpretation of Torah law, and the other admiring a demonstration of Israel’s tolerance and Judaism’s diversity. Somewhere in the middle are those who are sympathetic to the marchers but wonder if they could have chosen a less provocative venue — as if Israel needs such troubles right now.

If the Danish cartoons episode taught us anything, it is that more harm comes to a religion from those who commit violence in its name than from those whose acts are considered offensive by some of its followers. Opponents of the march should make their views known, but in peaceful ways that allow all Jews to protect what their enemies hope to conquer: the moral high ground.