Ep. 171: Fight the antisemitic left with a return to faith
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This book is partially, Jonathan, kind of a return to basics, right? It's kind of looking at just all the levels of rot that led us to a place where the world could not stand in unison with the Jewish people and the Jewish state in the context of the October 7, 2023 pogrom. They're pretty clear about what they believe. Yes, they want to kill all the Jews of Israel. They want to kill all the Jews in the world. But they also want to kill all of what they call the infidels.

Frankly, most other Muslims, other Muslims who don't subscribe even to their idiosyncratic conception of Sharia supremacism and Islamism, they understand that you start with the Jews, but it's always about something much more than that. By the way, the issue of the state of Israel on the geopolitical chessboard is simply all of that, just in a geopolitical version of that. But the key is that whether it's the Jewish people or the Jewish state, Jonathan, it's never actually about the Jews. It's always about something much, much, much bigger than that. ♪♪

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What is the antidote to the surge of anti-Semitism that has swept across the globe, and specifically the United States, since October 7th, 2023? The answer isn't just a matter of combating biased media accounts of the war on the Palestinian Hamas terrorists, as well as the disinformation and downright lies that are produced by those who act as the stenographers of Hamas on college campuses, as well as newsreels.

anti-semitism may be among the world's oldest hatreds that has attached itself and thrived as a part of a number of different ideologies in the last century including fascism nazism communism islamism and now the toxic woke intersectional leftist ideas that have come to dominate american education and culture but the willingness to succumb to the hatred of jew hatred virus

has always been a symptom of a sick society. The mainstreaming of anti-Semitism in the media and popular culture has created a perilous moment for Jews, but it is also a sign of just how corrupt and lost so many Americans have become. What's needed now, in addition to measures from the Trump administration aimed at routing woke ideology and anti-Semitism from our schools, is a willingness to understand that it is Western civilization,

which has its roots in Judaism, that is under attack as much as Israel. And only when more Americans understand the need for a return to venerating and learning the Western canon, rather than tearing it down because of false charges of it being irredeemably racist, as well as a recognition of the importance of Judaism to humanity and the future of the West, will it be possible to fully defeat the Jew-haters.

given the fact that the founders of the american republic were not only sympathetic to the jews but also proto zionists this shouldn't be hard but it is a lesson that most left-wingers and a loud but small group of right-wingers refuse to absorb as they sink further into the rabbit-hole of jew hatred if as john adams wisely said the american constitution was made for a moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate to the government of any other

then we must look to the decline of faith in 21st century society as one of the primary reasons for the rise of anti-Western ideologies and anti-Semitism. An overtly secular mindset, as well as one that refuses to believe in moral absolutes of good and evil, is particularly fertile ground for those who agitate for the destruction of the one Jewish state on the planet and the empowering of those who both committed and cheered the atrocities of October 7th.

In this way, both those besotted by the woke catechism of DEI and right-wing extremists who disdain the morality of the Judeo-Christian tradition are among the loudest voices spreading modern-day blood libels about the Jews committing genocide.

In this drama, the failure of liberal Judaism and its separationist faith to provide a coherent answer to the attacks on Jewish life has helped to create a situation in which American Jews are particularly vulnerable, both to being the scapegoats for an existential crisis for the West, and instead of joining with Christian allies, Jews have been fighting them. Instead of fighting for the rights of persons of faith who are bound to respect Judaism and Jewish rights,

Too many of us have been egging on the leftists who seek to tear down the foundations of Western civilization and harm the Jews. What we need is a revival of respect for faith that is rooted in Jewish morality, not settler colonialism or critical race theory. As long as we do not address that spiritual gap in modern society, we will continue to see the forces of anti-Semitic evil triumph, even if it cloaks itself in the language of human rights.

One person who has been thinking a great deal about these issues is legal and political writer Josh Hammer, and he has written a new book that sheds a great deal of light on them. Josh Hammer is senior editor-at-large of Newsweek, as well as the host of the Newsweek podcast, The Josh Hammer Show, and the daily podcast, America on Trial from the First. His legal scholarship and commentary on politics and culture has been widely published.

and he's the author of the new book, Israel and Civilization, The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West. Josh Hammer, welcome back to Think Twice. It's great to be back. Thanks for having me, Jonathan. Josh, thanks so much for joining us today. I want to start by asking you,

What led you to write your new book, Israel and Civilization, just now? What about the aftermath of the October 7th massacre made it particularly timely for you to address not just a political crisis, but what you clearly think is a spiritual one as well?

Well, Jonathan, I was inspired to write this book not merely because of October 7th itself, not merely because of the pogrom, not merely because it was the single worst day for the Jewish people since the Nazis, although that was part of it. But it was really the reaction to October 7th. It was really just the fact –

you know for a moment there the world had a very clear-cut dichotomy it could have chosen to stand with the jewish people in the jewish state or it could have chosen to to stand defiantly and unapologetically uh with the opposite with with with hamas with this medieval islamist seventh century style death cult and much

Much to my continued dismay and shock and horror, it was basically split on the question. The world split at best, you might say. I mean, the world certainly did not come out charging in unison for the obviously correct choice here. And that was immensely troubling. And it kind of led me to drop my proverbial, if not literal, jaw to the floor and ask a lot of questions as to how we possibly got so far off track here today.

and how he can possibly get back to basics. So this book is partially, Jonathan, kind of a return to basics, right? It's kind of looking at...

Just all the levels of rot that led us to a place where the world could not stand in unison with the Jewish people and the Jewish state in the context of the October 7, 2023 program. And then just kind of analytically walking through where we go to try to recover our heritage, because only by recovering that heritage, only by recovering that inheritance, I think, will we be sure-footed enough to actually withstand the very real threats that we face. So the book covers a lot of territory, as you know from

From reading it, and there clearly is a lot in here when it comes to contemporary state of Israel, Zionism, Jewish nationalism, U.S.-Israel relations. That's all in there. But the book fundamentally really is at its core calling for a biblical restoration. It's calling for Jews and Christians alike to really kind of lock shoulders and stand shoulder to shoulder like never before and to engage in the very necessary and very timely work

of an ecumenical joint biblical restoration because without recovering our heritage, Jonathan, I don't think that it's going to get a whole lot better from here in terms of being able to stare down the barrel of forces like Hamas, like Islamism, like wokeism, like globalism, global neoliberalism, I call it in the book. And we have to know whence we came in order to know exactly where we are going. Yeah, I think that's really important. And I think you rightly label the attacks on Jews as part of a war on the West.

But this is something that most Jews, as well as non-Jews, don't really fully recognize. How do we educate people to understand that as much as certainly Jews right now feel under the gun, feel as if they are the focus of hatred, that this is kind of a sidebar to a much bigger struggle

And I think a lot of Jews and many non-Jews also don't realize that when we speak about anti-Semitism on campuses and, you know, the pro-Humas mobs on the streets as well as in schools, that this is a symptom of something much bigger.

Well, anti-Semitism, Jonathan, as you well know, going back since its origins, has never actually been about the Jews. It is here, there, and everywhere about something much, much greater, or as the case may be, actually much worse than that.

And anti-Semites throughout history have understood this time and time again as well. I like to point to Karl Marx's infamous anti-Semitic essay in the 1840s on the Jewish question. This is one particularly notable example. This essay, this pamphlet was published a few years prior to his most well-known book, The Communist Manifesto. And in the essay on the Jewish question, he comes out swinging really hard against the Jewish people.

I mean, Karl Marx, not a fan of the Jews, one of the 19th century's most infamous self-hating Jews, you might say. But what is his goal? Is his goal actually just to discriminate against the Jews or, God forbid, to slaughter the Jews? No, that's actually really not his goal. His goal is actually nothing less ambitious than the ultimate burning down of free market capitalism and Western Christendom, of Western civilization as Christians have actually built it there. But he understood...

that in order to get to the majority population, the broader biblical religion, Christianity, you have to start with the original people of the book, the Jews, the world that first brought monotheism, the religion that first brought monotheism, that first brought biblical religion and so forth to the world there. You know, it's evil, but it actually is also intellectually consistent. It's logically consistent there. And again, anti-Semites have always understood this. They always come, Jonathan, for the Saturday people first thing.

and the Sunday people next. It's been said, but it's never been more true. Hamas, by the way, is a contemporary example. Their organizational charter, published in 1987, back when Hamas was founded as the mere Palestinian Arab offshoot of the broader Muslim Brotherhood movement, their founding charter, which you can literally Google today, I typically read it on the Yale Law website,

But they're pretty clear about what they believe. Yes, they want to kill all the Jews of Israel. They want to kill all the Jews in the world, Jonathan, including you and me. But they also want to kill all of what they call the infidels, which refers to Christians, refers to other pagans, whether they're Buddhists, Hindus, frankly, most other Muslims, other Muslims who don't subscribe even to their idiosyncratic conception of Sharia supremacism and Islamism. So all these groups, they understand that you start with the Jews, but it's always about something much more than that.

By the way, the issue of the state of Israel on the geopolitical chessboard is simply all of that just in a geopolitical version of that. So if your goal is kind of like George Soros, Open Society Foundation, Tides Foundation, if your goal is actually nothing less ambitious than the eradication of the nation states, if you want to basically take John Lennon's song Imagine and then play it out on a global stage, the eradication of borders, of all the very distinctions that make us human in the first place there,

Again, it's evil, but it actually makes a lot of logical sense to their diabolical credit to start with the world's first nation state. Because going back to the Bible, it seems to me when King David unites the tribes in Jerusalem, that's basically the example, the predecessor in antiquity to the modern nation state system. So if you want to get rid of the nation state, it makes a lot of sense, again, to start with the Jewish state. But the key is

is that whether it's the Jewish people or the Jewish state, Jonathan, it's never actually about the Jews. It's always about something much, much, much bigger than that. Yeah, I think that's been proven over and over again in history. Now, a good deal of this book is, as you've already kind of shown us, as much about philosophy as it is about current events.

And I guess the question is, why do we need to debate and advocate for the centrality of religious revelation, faith, and tradition in our society, as opposed to that of reason, a belief in a libertarian notion of being free to do anything so long as we just don't harm others? Why is that latter thing, do no harm, why isn't that adequate to defend us and defend our liberties, let alone defend the rights of Jews?

So there is a good amount of philosophy, both political philosophy and frankly just theology, I guess, for lack of a better description here. There's a whole chapter that kind of attempts to explicate halakha, Jewish law, as I understand it, and how central halakha and the broader halakhic tradition has actually been to the Western legal and political canon, as I understand it there.

Jonathan, I spend a lot of time on this for a couple reasons. One is that, first and foremost, this book, again, was written in context of the backlash against the Jewish people and against Western civilization. So there's kind of a two-pronged answer that follows from that. One, to the extent that this book represents a defense of the Jewish people,

then you have to simply defend the Jewish people's greatest gift to the world, which is the revelation at Mount Sinai, actually receiving the word of God, actually being the original people of the book, the Torah, the five books of Moses. And all that flows from that very much, including the oral law, the Talmud, which has for thousands of years been one of the most infamous bugaboos for the anti-Semites there. So the Talmud itself deserved, I think, a very straightforward defense as well, which I offered again in one of the earlier chapters of the book there. But another reason that I dwelt...

on Halakha and on Jewish law in particular there, because I genuinely believe that it offers a lot when it comes to the development of the broader and Western tradition. So I'm a lawyer, Jonathan, right? I went to law school, clerked on a federal court of appeals there. And, you know, I don't even think that I necessarily realize in law school just how many of the legal principles, frankly, today are actually derived from

one way or the other from the Jewish intellectual inheritance. So let's take something as ubiquitous as stare decisis, actually. So stare decisis is the notion that basically the notion of judicial precedent, that judicial precedent from one court to another in like-minded, factually and legally similar cases will either, depending on the context, will either straight up bind a future litigant or at a bare minimum it will be persuasive authority, persuasive precedent.

Well, there's a strong case to be made, and I make the case in the book, that this system of stare decisis actually comes from post-Talmud rabbinical courts, that rabbinical Judaism basically gave the English common law the notion of stare decisis there. So things like that I think deserve a robust defense as well. Another thing that the book gets at there, Jonathan, which I know you've written about because I've had the great pleasure of publishing a number of your op-eds over the years at Newsweek,

is this post-2016 very timely notion of how we reconcile individualism with the common good. This is a notion I think a lot of people in political discourse today are continually grappling with. It happens to be an ancient conversation, a genuinely old millennia-long debate. Judaism really kind of plays out this debate, actually. So I argue in the book that Genesis 127, the

the B'Tselem Elohim imperative, that God made man in his image, man and woman he created him, he created them. That is the single foundational ethical and moral imperative for all of Western civilization, I argue, and that is definitely a strong take on individual moral dignity and worth. On the other hand...

There is this profound repeated notion in the Talmud, in the Jewish legal tradition, on caring about the health of the community, on the general welfare, on the common good there. And I think as people today, especially perhaps on the political right where I make my home, I think as a lot of conservatives are continuing to debate how to reconcile individualism with the common good here. We have these debates of libertarian conservatism versus common good conservatism.

There's a lot that can be learned and a lot that can be gleaned about the way that the Jewish tradition has made these tradeoffs. So for all of these reasons, I thought it was important to kind of get deep in the weeds, so to speak, especially in these earlier chapters of the book. Yeah, I think it relates to a controversy that both of us addressed. It seems like a long time ago. It's six years ago since Sara Bamari and David French were debating Drag Queen Story Hour.

Both of them have gone on to different things. And David French has basically gone off the left wing, gone off into the rabbit hole of The New York Times, no longer so much The Conservative. But, you know, it was his his position that, well, they're not harming anybody else.

And at the time, I thought, well, he's got a point there. But before we knew it, when you allow something bad to spread, now drag queen story hour is ubiquitous. The whole issue, I mean, meant a lot in the presidential election this past year about whether we're going to let gender ideology, whether...

That sort of out-of-control libertarianism is not being really libertarian. It's taking over society. It doesn't stop there.

Yeah, and the Jewish tradition has a lot to say about this, right? Exactly. There was a lot there. So for a long time, Jonathan, when I was kind of coming of intellectual age within the conservative movement, I mean I really heard kind of variations of Enlightenment liberalism tossed around here. And oftentimes – not everyone, but a lot of times it would get boiled down to this John Stuart Mill thing.

harm principle formulation, where if you do no physical harm to me, then it's basically not my business and it's not the state's business. So unless you basically sock me across the face or you commit some sort of other tangible, discernible, physical harm, economic harm, theft, robbery, and so forth there, unless you do something like that there, then there's no reason for anyone to care about it. But that's not the approach that Jewish law takes. That is not the approach of Halakha. That's really not the approach of

frankly, of just the Bible itself, of the Torah, actually, I would argue there. So, I mean, we can go back as foundational as the actual revelation of Mount Sinai itself. So, you know, when the mountain, as our sages teach, when the mountain is physically hovering there over Moses and the Israelites and God essentially offers this world-altering quid pro quo, he basically says, if you enter my covenant, then I shall make you a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, Exodus chapter 19.

And, you know, he's not saying individually each and every one of you shall be intrinsically holy. Again, it's his emphasis on the collective, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. And there's a famous explanation in the Talmud in Tractate Shabbat, the tractate on the Sabbath.

I don't have the exact passage, the exact portion memorized verbatim here, but what it basically says is that if you are able to see and discern a sin or a harm that is coming to your community and you are in a position to stop it and you fail to stop it, then you are responsible for the harm or the sin of your entire community.

And by logical extension, if you are in a position such that you can stop the harm or the sin of the entire world and you fail to stop it there, then you are responsible for the harm or the sin of the entire world. That is a very, very, very different...

understanding of one's responsibility to the collective, to the common good, to the health of the whole, than, for example, we would find in Enlightenment to liberalism there. So the book is definitely questioning a lot of what Enlightenment to liberalism more generally has to offer. This gets back to kind of your earlier question about reason versus revelation there.

You know, I have a fairly searing critique throughout the book at various times as well of Reform Judaism, not of Reform Jews as individuals, but of Reform Judaism as a theological doctrinal movement, which I accuse of being far overly dependent on this notion of reason to the exclusion of tradition and revelation there. And this is definitely a theme of the book. But again, I wouldn't talk about it if I didn't think it were important. There's a lot of moving parts of the book there, but I like to think that it comes together at the end.

I think it does. You cite one of my favorite founding father quotes coming from John Adams about the U.S. Constitution being only suited for a moral and religious people and entirely inadequate to the government of any other. I think it resonates today, but the question is, how can we interest a 21st century population in this country, let alone the rest of the West,

whose worldview is not really rooted in tradition faith, but which is essentially secular. How do we get them, how do we attract people back to faith and to the traditions and to, you know, the sense of communal responsibility when it's so alien to their sensibilities and our popular culture?

Well, if I had the answer to that question, I would be a very wealthy man because to me you've essentially identified here what is the trillion-dollar question, not just the million-dollar question. I have long said it for essentially as long as I've been in the political commentary, writing, speaking space –

that if there is one thing that I could possibly do and snap my fingers and I would identify it as something close to a panacea for virtually all of our woes, it would be getting more Jews and Christians in good, God-fearing houses of worship. That, to me, is probably the number one thing that I would most like to see happen there. Now, the

The good news is that according to most of the most recent polling that we've seen on this, I can't remember if it was Pew or Gallup, but the last major poll on the subject, very comprehensive poll, 30 to 40,000 people answer the phone or whatnot there. It looks like we've hit a low point when it comes to the percentage of people in America who identify as Christians or go to church at least once a month or some other metric there.

It looks like it is starting to creep up now again ever, ever, ever so slowly. And indeed, if you look at the younger generation, Gen Z, the 18 to 29 demographic, politically, Jonathan, this is increasingly a demographic that is actually trending fairly conservative, which is quite surprising.

Now, what does that mean when it says trans-conservative? This is also the generation that has shockingly mixed views on Israel versus Hamas, for instance. So, you know, part of the game here is trying to make sure that if you identify as kind of your tribal political loyalty as being on the

the right, more generally speaking, that you actually have a sounder conception of what it means to be on the right. I address this as well in one of the later chapters of the book when I talk about these toxic new forms of purported rightism, whether it's the nihilism that comes from certain sectors, the Andrew Tristan Tate component there. Then you even have some people who

who profess or purport to be christians and they like to tweet out christ is king and whatnot there and and what they're really trying to do if you look between the lines there's a trying to drive a wedge between christians and jews people like candace owens and increasingly tragically tucker carlson of whom i was i i was i was once a fan uh once upon a time there and part of this book is basically arguing to these to these younger christians who make them

they may go to church sometimes maybe they don't there but you know they used to go at least for Christmas Easter there and they're tempted maybe to go down the path of a Candace Owens or a Tariq Carlson part of this book Jonathan is really geared towards that exact type of reader and basically trying to remind them you

you know where do you think your religion comes from me where do you think Christianity comes from exactly there you know I mean I'm not sure I'm not sure how many Jews have actually looked at a at the Christian Bible that includes what they call the Old Testament and the New Testament the New Testament is actually based on number pages it's a much smaller percentage of the Christian Bible the literally the majority of the Holy Bible is Chris understand it is what they call the Old Testament what to us is to knock the Hebrew Bible there so so we we share an overwhelming inheritance

Yes, we have serious theological differences over the nature of the deity. I'm not trying to whitewash that in any way whatsoever there. But it is deeply, deeply important for Christians to understand whence we come. And, you know, to your point, again, the American founders, I mean, this wasn't even a controversial point. They understood it in their bones there.

It wasn't a matter of debate. It wasn't a matter of debate at all. And like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin won the national seal to be Moses parting the Red Sea with the Israelites there. On the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, there's a verse quoted from the book of Leviticus. Thou shalt proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.

I mean, we see this time and time and time again there. So definitely part of the purpose of this book, Jonathan. It's important for both Jewish and Christian readers and frankly anyone who cares about the fate of the West. But there is a message in here certainly for young Christian conservatives, I think, to try to tempt them off the path of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. And now a word about our sponsors.

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Now, Josh, that's a really important point. And I think you see this as a refusal to see this question between Israel and the Palestinians. It's a question of good and evil. And that's partly why so many people, particularly people on the left,

have trouble understanding why they should be standing with Israel and why they're willing to stand with people like the Palestinians and Hamas, who are antithetical to everything else they believe.

Well, Jonathan, I've been critical sometimes of people who fall into the trap of what I call the World War II theory of foreign policy, where you essentially view every single foreign policy conflict around the world as reducing to this stark moral dichotomy of Nazism versus Americanism, of Hitler versus truth, justice in the American way. And I think you and I actually agree. And we can get to realism. We'll get to realism versus sort of neoconservatism in a minute. But this is a different issue. Sure.

Sure, but when it comes to the Israel issue there, this stark moral dichotomy actually does apply. It's just a point that I wanted to make there. Sometimes that moral dichotomy actually is in fact the case. It just doesn't apply everywhere, but sometimes it genuinely is the case there. And the Israel theater is one example where it seems to me to be unabashedly clearly the case here where you have –

One country that is just trying to survive is the country that, as is often said, they have full equal civil rights for everyone in the state of Israel, Jews, Christians, Druze, Muslims, Arabs, you name it there. Frankly, there are some professions in Israel actually where based on the percentages, if you really want to play kind of the

the woke representation game that Arabs punch way above their percentage in terms of their population, certainly the medical profession when it comes to doctors, nurses. There are some kind of higher-ranking positions there. So, you know, the left purports to care about liberal values and civil rights there. I mean, Jonathan, nothing makes me crack up more than when they fly the rainbow flag and say queers for Palestine or LGBT for Palestine. You know, it makes me think of kind of the old joke about chickens for Chick-fil-A.

And sometimes when I'm feeling a little cheeky, I'm tempted to tweet at these people on social media and say, I will personally bankroll your trip to Khan Yunus Arafa. Let's see how that actually plays out for you. Yeah, it's kind of a joke, but it's really not funny. Now, when we talk about foreign policy and you discuss this in your book, you –

You make the argument that a realist foreign policy is much better for Israel than one that is based on basically a crusade for democracy. Now, that idea of a crusade for democracy was very fashionable on the right and embraced by many conservative Jews elsewhere.

especially if we think back 20 years ago during the opening of the Iraq war and even the high hopes of the Bush administration for turning Palestinian culture into a democracy. Why is this a snare? And why is Israel better off if we have a foreign policy that is based on common, on an idea of interests and nations pursuing their interests as opposed to the crusade for democracy?

Well, John, I think it's very interesting to note that you're totally right. If you go back 20, 25, 30 years, a lot of politically conservative Jews here in America were Jewish.

We're certainly on board with a more kind of ideologically, not practically, but more ideologically interventionist foreign policy, certainly in the Iraq war there. But this mentality has never fully, fully taken on in the state of Israel itself. That's to me what is actually— Especially at the time. Right, very much at the time.

So back at the time, some of the anti-Semites these days like to talk about how Benjamin Netanyahu testified in Congress in 2002 and said that he would support the Bush administration going into Iraq. Well, two things are worth noting there. One is that

He actually was not even in government at the time. He was just speaking as a private citizen in his private capacity. Two, related to that, the reason that he was speaking in his private capacity and he was not in government is because the actual leader of the right at the time, before the Ghaz withdrawal and then when he basically lost his mind there, was Ariel Sharon. And Ariel Sharon actually was an outspoken critic of the idea that you would go in just to Iraq and...

and start toppling Saddam Hussein in the name of democracy. We've seen this hesitance to just go about toppling dictators in the purported name of democracy play out when it comes to Israeli foreign policy time and time again, actually, most recently when it comes to Bashar al-Assad. Just look at the recent statements, actually, literally over the past two, three months from many in Netanyahu's current government when it comes to people like Minister Katz, Minister Sa'ar. They are not fans.

of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's new guys in Damascus, Syria, and a lot of them are basically saying, you know what, we told you so. Like, Assad was obviously a monster there, but we're not in the business of going about just toppling people in the name of democracy or the people. So the Israeli mentality has always been in somewhat more of a tension with the American ideological neoconservative mentality. That's, I think, the first thing that is worth pointing out. Another thing that I talk about in the

book again. This all plays out in Chapter 7, which I believe to be one of the more important chapters of the book. In Chapter 7, I also talk about how the Bush administration, which is kind of the pinnacle, the high watermark of neoconservatism in the United States, you know, they weren't exactly this bastion of pro-Israel sentiment that I think a lot of people maybe remember them

or recall them to be. I mean, everyone from Colin Powell to Condoleezza Rice there, there was this repeated consistent emphasis on trying to do the whole land for peace, Oslo Accords diplomacy, trying to reach a two-state solution with the Palestinian Arabs. They continued this until, frankly, the waning days of the presidency. They were still issuing formal presidential memoranda on this in literally the final months in 2008 before Barack Obama took power.

And I think, Jonathan, that this comes, again, from this ideological place where you try to build democracies, build nations. Well, what is the most ambitious nation-building project in the Middle East? Well, trying to forge a new nation-state between the river and the sea, as they say, based in Ramallah or wherever else they want to base it there. So I think it's coming, frankly, from that ideological starting position. On the other hand, on the other hand,

The reason I think that Donald Trump, Mr. Foreign Policy Realist, Mr. MAGA America First, the reason that he's frankly not particularly interested in discussing the whole Palestinian Arab land for peace, two-state solution stuff, yes, they had the

the so-called vision, the roadmap for peace that he unveiled at the White House back in January 2020. That ends up, in retrospect, being something of a bargaining chip on the way to the Abraham Accords, very genius in retrospect there. But the reason that he doesn't really necessarily care a whole lot about this, because that's just not how he approaches foreign policy. That's not how he does it. His analysis is basically what is best, what is in the best interest of the United States? What is actually in our national interest? And as the case may be,

he correctly realizes that a strong, empowered, and emboldened Israel, an Israel that has America's back, that knows it has America's back, and is well-equipped then to go out and patrol the region and secure its own interests in a way that we're down to both of our interests when it comes to Hamas, Hezbollah, all these other U.S.-recognized foreign terrorist organizations –

That is foreign policy realism at work. Properly construed, Jonathan. There's a lot of so-called purported self-described realists today who are not actually speaking as realists. They're speaking as Father Coughlin, Ron Paul, America Last Isolationist there. So part of this kind of gets into the debate as to what actually foreign policy realism is. Well, I argue that foreign policy realism correctly defines, militates in favor of Abraham, a

style statesmanship and strongly emboldening and empowering U.S.-Israel relations. There's one foreign policy realist who definitely gets that. It's Donald Trump. I think it's time for more of these other self-described provocateurs who call themselves realists. I think it's time for them to kind of learn what we're talking about here as well. It's deeply ironic. People who remember the history of the late 1930s and early 1940s see the phrase America first as synonymous with anti-Semitism. And when you're talking about Charles Lindbergh,

You know, that's a strong argument. But the irony here is that Donald Trump and his America first policy is the most pro-Israel policy that America has ever had, could ever have. And yet, you know, certainly people on the left don't understand that sort of liberal Jews don't understand it.

But what also intrigues me, and you've already referenced them, is this small but loud minority on the right, people like the completely...

you know, off the deep end anti-Semites like Candace Owens, as well as somebody like Tucker Carlson, who was clearly the tribune of all conservatives during the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, but is now down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and platforming Holocaust deniers and Israel haters.

Why did – what don't they get here? What's at the root of it? Is it spiritual or is it political or is it just rooted in anti-Semitism? It's a great question. I'm not sure I have all the answers, but I have a couple of theories. So one of the things that I think is important to note when you're talking about today's media landscape, today's entertainment landscape, commentators, podcasters, talk show hosts, and so forth there –

I think it's important to understand that we are living in a day and age where trust in the gatekeepers across all institutions of society has catastrophically plummeted. So we're talking here about we are now in the aftermath of the Russia collusion hoax. We are now in the aftermath of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in the 2020 election, all that happened there. And COVID. That's exactly where I was going next. Perhaps most of the points, actually, we are now in the aftermath of COVID, which was one of the most

disastrous, absolute disasters when it comes to complete collapse of trust and public authority in general that, frankly, humanity has had in a century or two. I mean, it was catastrophic. And frankly, it's going to take us decades, decades to learn the full extent of

of the harms in the long term that were committed by depriving children of two years of their lives, of interaction there. Horrible, horrible, horrible stuff. So in this post-COVID milieu, where higher education, at least prior to January 2020-2025, was ideologically going down the rabbit hole of monolithic uniform leftism, where all the corporations were doubling, tripling down on everything from Black Lives Matter to woke and DI there.

There are a lot of people who are just deeply, deeply frustrated with the state of our quote-unquote authority figures. We live in a deeply, deeply, deeply populous, counter-institutional, counter-establishment age. And that's healthy to an extent, but the emphasis on to an extent I think is very, very important here because it can go off the rabbit hole very, very quickly. And where it goes off the rabbit hole, frankly…

is when you think about just all of human history. I mean, when you get into a conspiratorial mindset, Jonathan, when there is a complete and utter collapse, not a marginal, but a literal complete collapse in institutional trust there, and no one trusts anything, and you get to the point where we're all just asking questions because, you know, there's no one to possibly safeguard a gatekeep there. There's typically one place where this exercise ends. If you go back and look at human history, it typically ends with the Jews.

So that is my short and dirty, so to speak, explanation for how we got to this place where anti-Semitism is yet again rising here, even in certain pockets of the self-described nominal –

American right there. I think part of the other problem, which you and I were getting at maybe 10, 15 minutes ago or so, is that there is a decline when it comes to true biblical Christianity in this country. When you look at church attendance rates there, even a lot of these self-described evangelical churches attend

Some of them end up being kind of less theologically doctrinaire than people make them out to be. A lot of them even times are actually Israel skeptical there. They don't really stand for the values of the moral majority of the 1980s is really the point that I'm trying to make here, right? So across the board, there is a collapse in institutional trust and frankly even in kind of the bastions of philo-Semitism and pro-Israel sentiments, namely evangelical Christianity there.

there are reasons to be concerned a little bit as well. It doesn't mean that we cannot turn around the tide, God willing we will, but it's important to be sober about where we are right now. Yeah. As bad as that is, and as troubling as people like Carlson and Owens are, I don't think there's any question, and I think you note this in the book as well, that the primary engine driving anti-Semitism is

in America today and around the world is the woke left. For sure. In Europe, it's this bizarre alliance of Islamists, you know, the red-green alliance of leftists and Marxists and Islamists. But here in the United States, the Islamists are very much the junior partner. It's the woke left, which has taken over our education system, taken over the arts, much of our culture, and indeed under Joe Biden, the government as well.

Yet we have, and its grips seem to be just so tight, so great on these institutions that people were saying, well, the only alternative is to start new schools.

tear everything down and build new things up. But I think in the last couple of weeks, we've seen that the hold of the left is not as strong as maybe they thought it was and maybe as many conservatives and people who are horrified by it thought it was because the first time Donald Trump challenged one of the great institutions of the left, and I speak of my own alma mater, Columbia University, to either change or

or give up the money, the $1.2 billion they get from Uncle Sam, they surrendered. They folded like a cheap carpet. And I think this is really a historic moment, but also shows that this struggle that we're talking about, which is partly spiritual, partly political,

is not one in which conservatives are doomed to lose. And we're not doomed to see anti-Semitism run this country. It can be rolled back. 100%. It absolutely can be rolled back there.

Now, the Donald Trump phenomenon when it comes to higher ed is a fascinating example, and you're totally right. Columbia University folding like a cheap suit. By the way, it's not just higher education. Look at big law. So, you know, Donald Trump revoked the security clearances of Paul Weiss, which is a major law firm. They basically sent the global chairman of the law firm, a guy by the name of Karp, to go to D.C. to basically apologize and say that we're going to devote our lawyers to basically serving your legal clauses pro bono. I mean, they doubled –

They completely bent backwards. They went above and beyond to capitulate. From supporting the lawfare to fighting the lawfare. Yeah, exactly. So all it takes is a slightly more muscular form of conservative statesmanship, frankly, is basically what it takes here. So my basic take on this...

is, you know, Andrew Breitbart years ago had this famous line where he said that politics is downstream of culture. And he was basically exhorting his fellow conservatives that you have to make inroads in the culture. He was really speaking above all about Hollywood because he was from Los Angeles when it comes to Hollywood, technology, Wall Street, and so forth there. And then, then, you will start getting political wins at the ballot box there. But my criticism of this argument

of this pity statement has always been that it's only half true actually the culture absolutely can be downstream politics if you take a more muscular and properly tailored and targeted view of politics that's what donald trump understands of a dollar trump is doing there that's that's literally the columbia university in paul weiss examples in action there

So part of this has to do with people on the right getting more comfortable with this style of Republican governance to the extent that they have not done so already. I live in Florida, and Ron DeSantis is another perfect model, by the way, as to what this actually looks like in practice there. This is how you turn back the tide against ideological movements. And now it's entirely possible, and God willing –

perhaps it perhaps even outright likely that we will defeat these these cancers these cancerous anti-semitic anti-israel anti-western ideologies that are festering on college campuses and on and frankly just in the streets of our large cities there but we have to understand that this is not inevitable that's not that's not a grandfather clock or to pendulum is kind of kindly gently swinging back and forth this is an actual movement is going to take a concerted real effort

And frankly, it's also going to take just crass political power in order to push back the tide within the confines of the rule of law there. So again, let's be sober about what we're facing there, but let's recognize what's already worked. And frankly, in many ways, what's already worked, whether it's here in Florida dealing with the woke threat or whether it's Donald Trump at the national level dealing with higher education, big law and the lawfare and so forth there, sometimes you just have to actually take your pen and really just start exercising political power.

Yeah. Now, of course, that exercise of political power is, you know, I think falsely labeled as authoritarianism. The irony here is, is that the left has been using that, you know, has been using that power too. In this very week that Donald Trump, you know, forced Colombia to wave the white flag and which was being denounced in, you know, throughout the left as, you know, the end of the end of civilization.

Yeshiva University in New York was forced to accept an LGBTQ, to recognize an LGBTQ club on its campus, despite the fact that it's contrary to Orthodox Judaism. Now, whatever you think about the issue of gay rights, that was clearly an instance of New York State and New York City forcing a school to abide by its principles.

abide by its morals and using money, the same thing that Donald Trump did. And, but of course the left think that's perfectly fine. And the same, the same day that the times reported and editorialized against Trump pressuring Columbia, they reported Yeshiva's surrender as just a very good thing. And you know, how people had evolved.

Yeah, I mean, look at how Barack Obama and Eric Holder, his so-called wingman, literally sued nuns to force them to subsidize what they considered to be abortion-inducing pills, abortifacients, right? I mean, the left has understood for a very, very long time, and…

And to be clear, they take it to genuinely terrifying extremes. But they have long understood the notion that without political power, you're not going to be able to achieve anything. And what I'm calling for here, what Donald Trump has done in practice, is not anything remotely resembling trampling on the First Amendment religious freedom argument.

of the nuns, of the little sisters of the poor, or of the Yeshiva University and its conscience rights as well when it comes to standing for biblical marriage and so forth there. So, you know, we're not talking about that at all. We're talking about within the confines of the rule of law, basically just standing for something. This is kind of one of my overarching late motifs in the book Israel and Civilization is this criticism of values-neutral liberalism.

You have to stand for something. So in the book, I argue that there are three threats that are actually threatening to engulf Western civilization. Wokeism, Islamism, and global neoliberalism. This homogenizing World Economic Forum, United Nations, transnational imperative into the so-called blob, as I sometimes call it. But the point, Jonathan, is if you're actually going to stand and then mount a successful civilizational counteroffensive to preserve what today we call the quote-unquote West, then

You have to stand for something. You can't just defeat a force for the sake of defeating a force. So then the question is, you know, if moral argumentation abhors a vacuum and if people are naturally going to go with one form of moral argumentation where the alternative is just, you know, frankly, just amoral, just…

just claptrap and blather, then you have to actually fill in the moral void. And I argue in the book that that moral void that the West should fill in is nothing less than the morality, the law, the tradition that gave birth to our entire civilization. That is the biblical inheritance that is shared by Jews and Christians alike. Yeah, and I think it's important to point out that sort of classical liberalism

which sounds great, has proved to be incapable of defending itself against the totalitarian left, against woke ideology and gender theory and everything that goes with it, including anti-Semitism, because it doesn't have a strong basis in tradition, in religion, in faith, and our legal traditions.

It just surrendered. It's like David French and Drag Queen story hour. You just say it's okay if civilization collapses. I think that's exactly right. Classical liberalism really was kind of the predominant strand of right-of-center thought for a very, very long time there.

Look, classical liberalism gets a lot right. I mean, this notion on private property protection there, that's right there in the Bible, actually. You know, as I point out in one of the earlier chapters of the book, you know, socialism and Marxism violates literally multiple of the Ten Commandments, right? I mean, thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not covet. So, I mean, private property rights, which are kind of a hallmark of classical liberalism and laissez-faire economics, no doubt that these have a very firm basis in our tradition there. But

You can't just submit the entirety of your society, the entirety of your culture, and extrapolate the entirety of your civilization to this grand marketplace of ideas where public authorities and the state and actors in general, both private and public, who have real authority.

You know, you can't just kind of in mass take this position where we're not – we're deliberately going to choose to not stand for something, let the chips fall where they may. If society goes down the rabbit hole of Judeo-Christian values, great. If society goes down the rabbit hole of drag queen story hour and transgender chemical castration for kids, great.

you know that choosing to not take that stand is actually not a choice at all and again it's actually time to come full circle over here that's actually also contrary to the political philosophy of the hebrew bible so in in the tour of john then we see

The man clearly has free will. The Bible clearly stands for free will. We see over and over and over again that the children of Israel grievously mess up, the sin of the golden calf being a very prominent example of that. But you have free will, but you also concomitantly have a moral duty to choose correctly. So you have free will, but you have to choose correctly there. So too...

I would argue, in a modern context with our public authority figures, with our political figures. Yes, you guys technically can choose to stand for right or you can choose to stand for wrong. You can choose to stand for safeguarding innocent minors from the depredations of the ideologically induced medical profession, or you can choose to stand for kiddie chemical castration there. But you have a moral duty to choose the right way, but that requires

requires you to actually get off your butt and stand up and actually take a stand in the first place. So that, I think, is, frankly, is the conservative approach as opposed to classical liberalism. It's also the approach, I would argue, of the biblical tradition itself. Yeah. Now, turning to American Jewry, you speak of two things. One, the failure of liberal Judaism.

which has and remains the predominant affiliation of most American Jews, those who identify as Jews. And you also speak of the need for a Maccabean imperative. What do you mean by both of those? Well, John, it just seems to me like theologically liberal Judaism. And by the way, I have a lot in the book about my personal biography. My personal narrative weaves its way throughout this entire book. I tried to do that deliberately, seamlessly the best I could.

And I had some people who read an early draft of the book, Manuscripts, and said to me, they said, Josh, you're going to alienate a lot of readers here when it comes to your very severe criticisms of Reform Judaism and Theologically Liberal Judaism. And I said, I'm willing to take that risk because I genuinely think it's important, and I genuinely think that I'm actually the right person to deliver this message because I grew up in that environment. I grew up in a Reform secular environment. I've changed quite a bit since then there. But

But I'm intimately familiar with what I speak of here. And...

The reason, Jonathan, that contemporary liberal, theologically liberal Judaism really reformed, and I suppose Reconstructionism above all, is really what we're talking about here. The reason that they are flawed is because they basically do exactly what we were just discussing in reverse. They have totally forsaken tradition. They have totally forsaken the notion of an intergenerational inheritance going all the way back to the actual revelation at Mount Sinai. And they've done so because they have taken the side—

of what they decide to be, of what they say is quote-unquote reason. And because they resort to this Enlightenment liberal notion of quote-unquote reason as the exalted thing above all there, they feel confident in just casually tossing aside any number of the mitzvot, any number of the commandments there, frankly, just any overarching notion of intergenerational inheritance.

The problem is multifold. One is that at a philosophical level, this is astounding hubris, just utterly astounding hubris that you, with your reason between your Nagin, that you somehow know better than the divine will, than God's will himself. It's an utterly incongruous

incomprehensibly, astoundingly hubris point, frankly, there. You know, the better way, I think, to understand some of the commandments that Jews may not be able to reasonably interpret, that we might think strike us as illogical, the better way is, in my opinion, is to basically say, we're all made in the divine image, we're all made in God's image, so we have a spark

of the divine there, but we are not him. We are not the creator there and we do not have his capacity for understanding. So the fact that we can actually understand reasonably and logically some of the commandments there, that's actually great. That's the spark of the divine there where we can't necessarily understand there. So the red heifer or whatnot there where we can't have a logical explanation, well, maybe that's just because, again, we are not God. So that's kind of my doctrinal criticism of Reformed Judaism and theological, theologically liberal Judaism in general. Practically,

Practically and pragmatically speaking, this starts to get off the rails very, very, very quickly as well. You start abandoning any notion of authentic Torah values. You start abandoning support, of course, for the Jewish state. And you start taking up all sorts of rabidly left-wing political causes in the purported name of Judaism or quote-unquote Jewish values itself, whether it's environmental justice or racial justice or abortion on demand, same-sex marriage and so forth there.

You basically just take on a whole new political philosophy under the guise of quote-unquote reason, and you insert it where the Torah itself actually once would have been there. So you're doing a tremendous disservice to your people there. And frankly, it has not served American Jewry well, because when you water down the tradition, when you water down the religion to the point of essentially nothingness there, you're not really giving people a very compelling reason to actually pass it on to their children, which it

Partially explains why theologically liberal Jews have a shockingly and deeply disturbingly high rate of intermarriage as well. So that's kind of all the criticisms there of Reform Judaism. Again, I was raised in this tradition. I know of what I speak there. As far as the Maccabean imperative, which is the flip side to the coin, this is the second-to-last chapter of the book. It was one of my earliest chapters that I wrote because it's really from the heart. It's a deeply personal chapter.

It starts with my name, Jonathan. So my Hebrew name is Yehoshua Binyamin Maccabi. Hammer translates roughly as Maccabee because Judah the Hammer was Judah Maccabee's nickname there. It gets back to the Aramaic. It's really neither here nor there for present purposes. But I've always identified with the Maccabees in the Hanukkah story. I've always identified with the Hanukkah story in general. The Hanukkah story is...

in actuality, not as the media typically whitewashes it, is a civil war triumph of authentic Torah Judaism over Hellenizing assimilationist forces there. And the whole point of this chapter of the book is

is basically trying to urge to others that you can do it too, that you can actually help to preserve your tradition here to basically actually be a light unto the nations, as the book of Isaiah calls it, by standing strong, not just in this amorphous sense of the Jewish people because you went to a Holocaust remembrance class or whatnot there. Maybe you visited Auschwitz or Yad Vashem or something like that there. No, but you can actually do it in practice.

by publicly standing for the Torah, by taking sincere Torah stances in your private life, in your public life there, by actually doing the mitzvot, by doing the commandments there. And that, Jonathan, above all, is the way that Judaism actually is sustained from one generation to the other there. So it's a very personal call there. There's other parts of that chapter as well. I have a couple thousand words about firearms and gun ownership. So there's a lot of moving parts there.

But I'm hoping to reach people above all in that chapter who are inclined, perhaps, to go down a similar path as I myself have taken. Yeah, I think you've made some really important points. I mean, obviously, I think some people, as far as the reform movement is concerned, there are people within the reform movement who are ardent Zionists, people like Rabbi Amiel Hirsch in New York City, who have sort of recognized the problem of, you know, universalizing everything and, you know, creating a generation of

young Jews who are either assimilating and just shucking off their Jewish identity or embracing the cause of the enemies of the Jewish people. And I think he's been a strong voice, but he's a minority voice within the reform movement, unfortunately.

And as far as the Maccabees, again, when you speak of gun rights and sort of a more muscular Judaism, you're sort of swimming against the stream of contemporary American culture, certainly Jewish culture. But I think that's a message that I think needs to be heard simply because we're in such a moment, as you begin your book, was saying this is a moment of peril for the Jewish

It is a moment of peril, and again, we have to understand just how perilous it is. I'm not trying to blackpill anyone. I'm not trying to say that it's all downhill from here. On the contrary, I'm trying to inspire people to say that it can be better and that you in your own personal capacity can

have it have it in you to actually be an agent for change to actually be an agent for change whether you are a jew who can be a light unto the nations as the book of isaiah calls it or just be a christian who understands your biblical inheritance you yourself in an individual capacity you know that that that can easily expand on a very grand scale and make a very very big change very very quickly there so we are in in a in troubling times jonathan

The left speaks for itself, certainly in some pockets of the right. Things are not going particularly healthy as well right now. On the other hand, we still have a deeply pro-Israel, deeply philo-Semitic president of the United States right now. Things are a heck of a lot better from my perspective than they were six months or a year ago or so. And there's all sorts of reasons for kind of practical, on-the-ground optimism as well there. Ultimately, the Jewish people's destiny really is in the hands of the Jewish people. That's the way it's been since time immemorial. That's the way it will always be there. So...

For the Jewish listeners and the Jewish viewers, I really just hope that you take that message back home to you. Understand that your destiny, our people's destiny is in your own hands there and that you personally can contribute to the overall health and well-being of our people. Well, that's a very important point. And I think even many people in the Orthodox community in the United States are pretty quick to write off the future of American Jewry, as are many Israelis, as I'm sure as we both know.

But yet the message of your book is actually optimistic about saving America, saving the West, and also saving American Jewry, that you don't see American Jewry as a lost cause at all. I don't see it as a lost cause. If I saw it as a lost cause, I probably would have left at some point.

I'm an American, Jonathan. I am obviously a proud Jew, but I'm an American. I talk about this at great length in one of the earlier chapters. I've been steeped in Americana since I was a very, very, very young boy. I'm born on Abraham Lincoln's birthday. He's my favorite figure in American history. I clerked on the Federal Court of Appeals. I still publish constitutional scholarship. I love the U.S. Constitution. I love this country. Culturally, I'm a country music fan. I'm a huge American sports fan. I

I mean, this is my home. This has always been my home, and I would like for it to always be my home. And I see no particular reason why American Jews who have grown up in this amazing, wonderful country, the greatest country, I

outside of Eretz Israel, of the land of Israel that has ever existed for the Jewish people is right here in the United States of America. There is absolutely no reason to start doomsdaying yourself or blackpilling yourself into a depression or anything like that there. No. Look, the Jewish people have dealt with discrimination before. They have dealt with terrible epithets and slogans and whatnot before their

Things are a little bit different today. And again, to get back to kind of the whole gun thing, among the reasons that things are different in the United States is because you actually, as a Jew, can defend yourself. That's actually a very, very important point there. That is something that has not existed for a large diaspora Jewish population basically in all of human history is that Jews can defend themselves as much as they want to. That above all is why I feel that the discussion firearms in the second to last chapter of the book is actually so important there. But again, whether it's doing the mitzvot,

whether it is training yourself with a firearm, whether it is supporting Eretz Yisrael, I'm Yisrael, all these things there, all these things can contribute in a very personal way to helping to turn this tide back towards a place of optimism and helping, therefore, to secure the health, flourishing, safety, and prosperity of the Jewish people.

Well, that's an important point for us to end on. Josh, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. You can follow Josh on X at Josh underscore Hammer. You can read him in Newsweek. You can listen to his podcasts. And good luck with your book, Israel and Civilization. It's an interesting and important read, and I do recommend it to our audience. Thank you so much, Jonathan. We also want to thank our audience.

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