Israel and Western Civilization

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My friend Mark Tapson interviewed Josh Hammer, author of:
Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West

It's a very important topic and Mark did such a great interview, I thought "Why re-invent the wheel?" and rather than interview Josh myself, I asked if I could rebroadcast it. And he graciously said yes.

You can listen here: 
Your American Heritage 5 17 2025 with Mark Tapson and Josh Hammer

You can read it here:

Mark Tapson (01:40):

I want to read a passage to you from a book I just finished, the author of which I'm about to bring on as my guest for this episode. It's a brief passage that I think quickly sums up the moment in time in which we find ourselves right now, and I don't at all think that it overstates the urgency and seriousness of our situation. Here's the quote, Western civilization now faces an existential crisis. The barbarians have breached the gate. The hegemonic threats of illiberal, leftist woke and illiberal totalitarian Islamism have combined with a dastardly red green alliance to put the west in a position of historic precarity. What we are living through right now is easily Western civilization's most tenuous position since the height of the Cold War, perhaps even since the Battle of Vienna in 1683 when a coalition of European Christendom successfully repelled the invading Ottoman empire and saved the European continent from Muslim conquest.

Mark Tapson (02:43):

Whether European leaders today care to preserve that legacy or to dilute their own civilization or via unfettered third world immigration and Islamization is another matter. And whether Western leaders as a whole now care to preserve their heritage from ideological ruin, cultural decadence and demographic collapse is the foremost question of our time. If the West is going to survive as a semi concrete entity and not either be subsumed into an amorphous global neoliberal blob or be conquered by woke and Islamism, that is if the West is not going to commit suicide and be the author and finisher of its own destruction, it is imperative that its core constituent parts all stand boldly together. Specifically Western Jews and Christians must stand shoulder to shoulder like never before. That's the end of the quote, and I couldn't agree more with all of it. That's why I'm excited to have the author on today.

Mark Tapson (03:41):

And we're going to talk about the dire straits in which the West finds itself, the enemies we face, and the holy alliance we need to form in order to defeat these various threats and make Western civilization great again. My guest today at the intersection of politics and culture is senior editor at large of Newsweek, a syndicated columnist. He hosts a Newsweek podcast and syndicated radio show and is a constitutional attorney by training, which adds an interesting spin to the mix. He's all over the media these days. He has a brand new book out which the publisher can barely keep in stock called Israel and Civilization, and we're going to dive deep into that today. Josh Hammer, welcome to the Right Take podcast.

Josh Hammer (04:20):

Mark, I really appreciate you having me. Thank you so much.

Mark Tapson (04:22):

The book is packed with so many great ideas that I hardly know where to begin my questions and I hope I don't jump around too much or overlap too much. But let's start with a two part big picture question, although actually these are all going to be big picture questions. First, what is Western civilization? Because I think a lot of people know what it is, but might be hard pressed to define it. And two, how does western civilization stem from Israeli and Jewish roots?

Josh Hammer (04:51):

So this really is the million dollar question, and part of the reason that I decided to write this book, and let's be very clear, it is a postoc October 7th, 2023 book, but the book was not necessarily written in response to the pogrom in Southern Israel by the Hamas Jihads. Rather, it was written in response to the world's response to the pogrom. There was this moment Mark, where the world had a very clear opportunity to take a defiant stand for a staunch American ally, the cradle of the two biblical religions, Judaism, Christianity. The world had a chance to stand with that, and they seemed deeply confused as to whether or not to stand with that country with those people or this medieval Islamist death cult trying to take us back 1300 years or so. So it was that frankly just jaw dropping that utterly jaw dropping response to the pogrom that really galvanized me to write this book.

Josh Hammer (05:48):

And because of that reaction, it was evidence to many of us that what we refer to as western civilization is as something of a crossroads. And this has become something almost of old hat, you might say over the past five, 10 years as people say that western civilization is at an inflection point, is at a crossroads. And I'm not denigrating that whatsoever. I happen to profoundly agree with the sentiment. But to your question, it's important to define terms here. And I, I'm actually a lawyer by background. I happen to be a fan of using precise language and defining terms. So look, you have this classical Straussian formulation, Leo Straus, the famous 20th century University of Chicago political scientists. I mean his influences is frankly near ubiquitous when it comes to right of center circles these days. Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, the Claremont Institute down in California, I'm a Claremont alum myself.

Josh Hammer (06:38):

And the classic Straussian formulation of western civilization is something of a DNA like double helix. These two strands that are perpetually interweaving between reason and revelation between Athens and Jerusalem. And I don't necessarily reject that conception of it, that double, he looks like conception rather here is what I will say. I will say that to me, the revelation side, the Jerusalem components tends to get deeply short shrift in this particular equation. There it it's almost of an afterthought, and that's kind of the way that we are taught it in schools as well. When you take your classics in high school and college university there, you don't really talk about the Bible. Do you basically go straight to the Greeks and the Romans there, you dive head in when it comes to Cicero and Aristotle, and I'm not downplaying any of these incredible thinkers. I happen to generally be a big fan of Aristotle actually.

Josh Hammer (07:33):

But you basically just leap over the entire revelation component there. So the same way to make somewhat of a crass analogy the same way that in the modern post World War II conservative movement, to go back to Frank Meyer, the founder of National Review and his theory of fusion, fusing this laissez-faire libertarian sentiment with moral traditionalism the same way that I think moral traditionalism has gotten short shrift in the post-World War II conservative movement. So too, do I think that Jerusalem revelation has tended to get short shrift in the way that we think of western civilization because really none of what we think of today as the West would actually exist. Were in not for the Bible, were not for scripture, were in not for revelation, which I trace back all the way to God's initial revelation to Moses and the Israel. It's standing there at the base of Mount Sinai.

Josh Hammer (08:22):

Actually, mark the original title for this book, when I first conceived it was actually not Israel and Civilization. It was actually Sinai in civilization, which really kind of would've more powerfully driven home that point there. But the title to be clear works just fine, I believe there. But I evoke multiple early chapters in the book Israel and Civilization just attempting to demonstrate that everything from the English common law to the American founding the constitutional order to basically also just everyday ethical norms that we take for granted something as prosaic, as the Golden Rule do unto others as you would like to be done to yourself. That is Levitical in origin. That's Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18, to treat the Stranger as your fellow. There's any number of examples here. I'll just give one very brief example. I don't want to filibuster or too much in this particular opening question, but just one example as to how the Bible frankly is the origins of separation, of powers of rule of law, English, common law there.

Josh Hammer (09:22):

So there was his late 14th century, early 15th century, very conservative English common lawyer by the name of John Fortescue. He was kind of the intellectual predecessor in many ways to Edmund Burke, who happened to be a big fan of as well. And Fortescue at that time observed when he was codifying the English common law in his own treatise. He observed that the notion that the King of England is not above the law is part of the English common law. And he cited the book of Deuteronomy, which was the first book to actually make this radical claim that even the king is subject to the laws that is a deuteronomistic principle. And the book is dedicated really to trying, there's a lot going on here in this book as I think, but part of it is really just dedicated to trying to suss out so much of these underlying antecedents and precepts that many today have simply just forgotten, taken for granted.

Mark Tapson (10:13):

And not only are the Jewish people in the state of Israel central to the origins of Western civilization, as you put in the book, you argue also that they're essential to the survival and flourishing of Western civilization today. Why is that?

Josh Hammer (10:26):

Well, it seems to me that if you are defining Western civilization as I do, as again not exclusively being coterminous anonymous with the Bible and the Christian tradition, I certainly accept a role for reason and for Greco-Roman thought and so forth there. But I do think that the Bible scripture that all of this really is truly the underlying basis of Western civilization. And again, there's too many examples to count here, but the entire notion of private property rights, you can arguably trace to the Hebrew Bible, frankly. I mean, thinking here about modern conceptions of socialism, I mean, socialism violates best I can count at least two of the 10 commandments, right? Thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not covet. So private property rights essentially have their origin. It's actually not just that mean. There are entire Talmudic tractates dedicated actually to private property, right?

Josh Hammer (11:24):

So private property rights is deeply, deeply rooted in the Bible, in Judaism in particular and in Jewish thoughts. Yeah, even something as basic as that we are all genuinely morally equal and that we all have equal moral worth and did the knee under God. I mean, I think often Mark about Thomas Jefferson's famous line and declaration that it is self-evident that all men are created equal. But he was essentially borrowing a very similar phrase from John Locke about a century prior writing his second treatise over in England there. But sometimes I think to myself, well, is it actually self-evident to everyone in the world? I mean, for instance, just to give a graphic example, if you were a Taliban goat herder in the mountains of Afghanistan, would it actually be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain in nailing rights?

Josh Hammer (12:15):

I mean, the obvious answer is no, but the reason that someone like Jefferson or Locke could write this was that they were saying it in a certain cultural and civilizational milieu, a biblical civilizational milieu that has as its basis. Genesis chapter one, verse 27, the divine image imperative that God made man in his image, male and female who created them. I argued that Genesis 1 27 is the bedrock of this assertion that all men are created equal and thereby the underlying basis for equal protection in the Constitution and so much else. So to get back to your question, then I'm thinking a bit of a circuitous way to answer your question. I apologize for that. But to get back to your question, if this really is where it all begins, if it really truly does all begin with the Bible, and in many ways as the American founders themselves recognize with the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, frankly the first five books in Moses and so much is obviously packed in there.

Josh Hammer (13:12):

If this is really where it starts, then it simply stands to reason that if you abandon the actual source of that, then you will not have a leg to stand on when it comes back to pushing back there. And in the bookmark, I identify three hegemonic threats that threaten to engulf and God forbid, destroy Western civilization in no particular order. Those threats are woke islamism and global neoliberalism. The latter most is the more difficult to define, but think of it as the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, various globalists, transnational tribunals. I like to jokingly refer to it as basically John Lennon's song. Imagine playing out on a world stage this homogenizing imperative about all the differences including borders, religion, so forth there. So those were our three threats, woke Islamism and global neoliberalism. In order to fight back against these threats, you have to stand for something because in order to fight, you need a reason to fight.

Josh Hammer (14:11):

This is just basic logic 1 0 1, right? So in order to kind of galvanize the masses, to withstand these genuinely malicious, malevolent forces there, you have to stand for something there. So the question arises, what then is it going to be? And my very simple answer is that we should take a stand on the grounds that made us great in the first place, and that is the Bible. And then necessarily calls, of course, it calls for Christians who have done more than anyone to actually build Western civilization over the past 2000 years. But it also by sheer necessity, based on how I've defined Western civilization, it also includes, it must include the original people of the book. It must include the people who are called in the book of Isaiah to be a light unto the nations by their observance of the commandments and so forth there.

Josh Hammer (14:58):

And that's the Jewish people as well. So the Jewish people are simply necessary to the fate of western civilization. Antisemites throughout history have always recognized this. Mark as of course Karl Marx, he wrote as infamously anti-Semitic treatise on the Jewish question, the 1840s just a few years before the Communist Manifesto was published, and it was awful horrifically anti-Semitic. But every student of history knows that Karl Marx is actual goal was not merely to extricate Judaism. His goal was nothing less than the overthrowing of the entire Western Christian capitalistic free market order. So what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews, the people of Israel therefore are the canary in the coal mine for the broader west. And the state of Israel is the exact same thing. I argue on a geopolitical chessboard, the canary in the coal mine for the broader west.

Mark Tapson (15:50):

Yeah, there's an Islamist saying that goes something like first the Saturday people, then the Sunday people, in other words, first the Jews and then the Christians. Do you see that happening in this current antisemitic surge that we've been witnessing ever since the savage October 7th attacks? First the Jews, then the Christians, and what can both communities do to push back against being targeted like that?

Josh Hammer (16:12):

Well, look, a lot of the post-OC October 7th stuff has tragically tended to focus on the Jews, but there are also, of course, are any number of righteous non-Jews who have taken the obviously correct stand here, which is to side with civilization against barbarism to side with Israel and the Jewish people against students for justice and Palestine and the Hamas sympathizers and all the various miscreants who are causing all sorts of havoc on campuses there. So I have any number of personal anecdotes that I've heard from Jewish and Christian college students there of these folks yelling and spitting in the faces, not merely of Jewish students, but of Christian students as well simply for making cause with the Jews with the Jewish state of Israel there. Now, look, there have been instances, of course in the United States specifically of Muslims, radical Muslims that is targeting churches, Christian houses of worship, but it's not just in the United States.

Josh Hammer (17:12):

I mean, look at what's happening in Africa right now with the Coptic Christians in Egypt to the Christian community in Lebanon, Bethlehem. I mean, Bethlehem has seen a tragic ethnic cleansing of its Christian population over the past 100 years under the Jack boots of the Palestinian authority there. It seems like every other weekend now we get some new headline in Africa, whether it's Nigeria or the Congo or somewhere else of some horrific massacre of Christians there by Boko Haram or some other radical Muslim forces there. So this notion of first the Saturday people, then the Sunday people has been born out time and time again. Frankly, you can actually just go back and read Hamas' founding charter if you would like. It's actually publicly available, literally if you want to read it. It's right there at the Yale Law School Library, Hamas founding charter from the late 1980s.

Josh Hammer (18:00):

They make very clear that they want to see the death of all Jews, but they also make very clear that they seek the death of all infidels. And infidel is how they define anyone who does not subscribe to their idiocy, radical Islamist ideology there. But look, I mean, whether it's that, whether it's Osama Bin Laden and nine 11 there, I mean, there's too many examples to count of these same people coming after all of us, not merely the Jews albea, though the postdocs October 7th pushback has seemingly tended to focus primarily on the Jews, but you have any number of righteous friends of the Jewish people in Jewish state who are golfed up in this maelstrom as well.

Mark Tapson (18:35):

Yeah. What do you think the reactions to the October 7th attacks like the rallies supporting Hamas, academic endorsements of violence, the targeting of Jews and Jewish businesses in the West, what do you think all that reveals about the moral decay that's at the heart of our culture that we need to purge ourselves of?

Josh Hammer (18:53):

Well, it says nothing good. That is for sure. It says a lot about how dire our straits are that we're even needing to have this conversation in the first place there. And it really does make you pause and just kind of ask some very basic questions, which is how do we possibly get into this position in the first place there? And I don't have a one or two sentence answer to that. It seems like it's a long thing. Part of it is the old saying attributed to the Italian Marxist theorist grame about this long march through the institutions, it seems like the left has really at this point, deeply succeeded unfortunately in doing exactly that when it comes to higher education, when it comes to corporate America, when it comes to so many of the opinion making opinion sculpting institutions in America. They really do control the overwhelming majority of it to this day.

Josh Hammer (19:52):

And look, a lot of it is not all of it, but a lot of the specific post-OC October 7th animus, I think can be traced to two things at least as it pertains to the left. And those two things are the unique and the ascendant anti Zionism itself, that is one there. And then two is the metastasis of DEI. So let's take those, I guess one at a time there. So when it comes to this profound anti-Zionism there, there's a lot to empath there. But real quick, my basic take on this is that the left starts to turn on the state of Israel after the 1967 war because the 1967 war, which if you look historically was around the same time as the rise of the Frankfurt School cultural Marxists in the American Academy back in the 1960s. So the six day war happens, Israel has this miraculous victory there.

Josh Hammer (20:48):

That was when they established that they are not necessarily the David, but that they are the proverbial Goliath there. So the old school left this mentality, which instinctively looks at the purported underdog. I mean, hard to think of the Arabs as an underdog, where Israel's a tiny state, they control massive territory, but I digress. But they look at the purported aggressor and they are appalled, and they look at the purported underdog, and they're attracted to that. There you take that, and then you combine it with this deeply toxic stew of DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, which is essentially just neo Marxism, the same way that the original Marxism was predicated on this bifurcation of the proletariat and the trics, the working class, and the elites overthrow the revolution of the proletariat. Kind of the same thing now where it's this bifurcation between oppressed and oppressor classes there.

Josh Hammer (21:43):

Yet again, Jews and Christians find themselves in this particularly toxic taxonomy on the exact same side of the ledger. Jews and Christians are both deemed by the left to be oppressors, kind of curious, frankly, how anyone can read anything about Jewish history and conclude that the Jews are oppressors. That's not my reading of Jewish history, suffice it to say, but they seem to arrive at this conclusion nonetheless, there. And then you add the racial element there. They like to depict Israel as these white colonizers, which is also news to me, mark, because yes, I'm an Ashkenazi Jew, but my wife is a Sephardic Jew and she is darker skinned. And my mother-in-law actually actually speaks fluent Moroccan Arabic. She was recruited in her youth by Mossad back in Israel because she looked and talked like an Arab. So I mean this notion that Israel is a bunch of Larry Davids or Jerry Seinfeld, it is kind of this cartoonish conception of frankly just a bunch of young drooling morons on university campuses.

Josh Hammer (22:42):

But you kind of look at all of what I just said there, and you start to see a picture as to how this came about on the left. And then the final thing that I will add here, and this is really the arguably the most important point I would say, is I really do trace a lot of the how do we get here? Question. I really do trace a lot of it to the actual decline of religion, America and just dwindling church attendance. I frankly think that in many ways, if we could get more Jews in Torah, observant synagogues and more Christians in Bible believing churches, really the latter, because Christians obviously are such a massive number in this country, that would be a near panacea to almost all of our societal woves when it comes to our loneliness, despondency crisis, our addiction to big tech, the fact that we're not spending enough time in the flesh interacting with friends and family, our spiritual crisis, our need for meaning in our lives. If I could stab my fingers and somehow make a new great awakening happen, that would be the number one thing that I could possibly do.

Mark Tapson (23:48):

I totally agree. Neeson once said that all of the terrible things that had happened in his country since the 1917 revolution was because man had forgotten God.

Ed Bonderenka (23:58):

Well, we've been listening to Mark Tapson's interview of Josh Hammer regarding his book, Western Civilization and  Israel, and come on back for the second half, Your American Heritage.

Ed Bonderenka (24:37):

Once again, welcome back to Your American Heritage, and I'm playing a podcast from my friend Mark Tapson, who podcasts at the Right Take with Mark Tapson. He's interviewing Josh Hammer, the author of a great book on Israel and Western civilization. And Mark agreed to let me play the interview for you. So I hope you're enjoying it. And here we go.

Mark Tapson (25:02):

Josh, in your book, you address something that always comes up in anti-Israel protests, which is that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, it's just criticism of Israeli policies is, Hey, we're just asking questions, that sort of thing. How do you answer that?

Josh Hammer (25:17):

This is an important question. There's a few layers of it to unpack here. So Zionism itself, pre 1948, was somewhat of an interesting intellectual debate. The Jewish people themselves vociferously, disagreed on this question. To this day, Jews still disagree over the theological implications or lack thereof of Zionism. There are some strands of reti Judaism what the media sloppily or lazily refers to as quote Ultraorthodox Judaism that are either non Zionist or sometimes even anti-Zionist. But it's important to understand what these terms actually mean here. So when these Orthodox groups, and to be clear, I'm not speaking about a majority of Orthodox Jews or anything here, but there are some who take a genuine principled theological stance. But what they're basically saying, and I don't want to get too deep in the weeds necessarily of Jewish theology, but what they're essentially saying is that the reconstituting of the Jewish homeland in E Israel, the land of Israel should not come unless and until, or really until the Jewish Messiah himself arrives.

Josh Hammer (26:26):

But when they take this stance, mark, this is the very key point there, even if they were reject that the founding of the modern state in 1948 is what the religious Zionists would call a theologically significant turning point in the coming of the Messiah. That's what the religious Zionists in Judea and Sumari and so forth believe, and I'm inclined towards that camp myself, full disclosure. But even on the other side, the reti Jews who do not believe this, there, it ends up being somewhat of a theological distinction without much of a political or practical difference. So to give you an example, my oldest brother-in-law who lives in Southern Israel, maybe five, six miles from the Gaza border, is himself a black cat, retti Jew. He absolutely is a non Zionist in his druthers. There would be no modern state until the Messiahs here. But his actual thoughts when it comes to two state solution with the Arabs land for peace, Iran, I mean, any of these issues, his actual policies are essentially indistinguishable from mine.

Josh Hammer (27:28):

You have a lot of people, a lot of folks, I've seen Candace Owens do this, some folks who point to this tiny, tiny, tiny fringe group called Net Carta. I mean, we're talking here essentially about the Westboro Baptist Church of Jews. I mean, it's a truly, truly fringe group. These are the guys who in the past have flown to Tehran to meet with the Al. They've done all this horrific, horrific stuff, and they're vocal, they're allowed at rallies, but they are a genuine tiny minority here. So that's the very first thing to say is when you see people like a Candace Owens or a Jackson Henkel or some of these other provocateurs who like to cite to this tiny fringe group, it is literally the equivalent of someone pointing to the Westboro Baptist Church and saying, this is what Christianity actually believes. It is simply just not how it works.

Josh Hammer (28:13):

But the more important part of the question about anti-Zionism antisemitism, here's essentially how I would answer it. First, let's define terms post 1948. If you are an anti-Zionist, what that means is not necessarily that you disagree with the policies of the state of Israel. And anyone, anyone who's been to Israel, and anyone who knows Israel, knows that Israelis disagree all the time, quite vocally, in fact, with their government. Israel has one of the most fractious political systems, one of the most fractious body politics, for better or for worse in the world. The old joke about two Jews, three opinions, very much is the case in Israel's political system. So to simply call out the policies of the Israeli government is not to be an anti-Zionist. What is to be an anti-Zionist is to call for the dissolution, the disintegration of the Jewish state post 1948 at a time.

Josh Hammer (29:05):

And in a moment when half or likely at this point, slightly more than half of the world's Jewish population lives in this tiny states, to me, that is anti-Zionism. Now, whether or not that constitutes antisemitism to me then depends on one of two things. On the one hand, if you are a genuine, true believing George Soros Open Society Foundation, John Len, imagine your principled stance is that there actually should be no such thing as a nation state. The 1648 was failing a nation state system was a mistake that we should actually have global government there. And you don't want there to be a Jewish state the same way that you don't want there to be an Italian or a Brazilian state, whatever there, okay? If that is your actual principle stance and you're not exerting more energy calling for the eradication of Israel's borders than you are Paraguay or Australia's borders, I can probably live with that.

Josh Hammer (30:01):

But if you are focusing disproportionately on calling for the eradication of the tiny Jewish states borders, yes, that is antisemitic. It is driven by a fairly obvious urge to single out one specific people and say that they alone must be deprived of any rights to reconstitute in their ancestral homeland there. And that is kind of how I draw the analytical lines there. But again, the term has to be defined. If you're simply criticizing the policies, if you're saying, I don't like Netanyahu, I would like someone else, that's fine. You're allowed to do that. But if you're saying from the river to the sea, IE literally calling for the eradication of the state there, and you're only calling for the eradication of Israel, you don't really give a crap frankly about Papua New Guinea or whatnot there if you're only focusing on Israel. Yes, that is pretty clearly antisemitism.

Mark Tapson (30:55):

Josh, this surging antisemitism from the left that we've seen since October 7th has empowered Antisemites on the right who are not out there in the streets like the left is or taking over college campuses, but they're coming out of the woodwork to amass online around internet influencers like Candace Owens, whom you mentioned, and many others. What can conservatives like me who value the Judeo-Christian roots of our civilization, who support Israel and who support this alliance of Jews and Christians against our common enemies, what can we do to stem or de-legitimize this tide of right wing antisemitism?

Josh Hammer (31:32):

Well, this is a major concern. This is indeed one of the reasons that I wrote this book. I mean, mark, look, this book has some specific messages for my fellow Jews. The entire penultimate chapter of the book, which is called the Maccabean Imperative, is really written for a Jewish audience. But I would say the number one audience for this book is not necessarily Jews. It really is, I would say above all targeted at younger Christians and younger conservatives in particular there, because there are a lot of provocateurs, propagandists that seems to be motivated, as you just said, at trying to drive this wedge between the Jewish people and the Christians. They call into question the entire notion of Judeo-Christian, which frankly just genuinely baffles me. The Christian Bible, best I can tell, I haven't done a literal page count, but is roughly 75%, give or take the Old Testament IE, the Hebrew Bible.

Josh Hammer (32:29):

I mean, I am sorry, but how is that not? It just seems so obvious. I mean, so maybe it's a pure semantics dispute, I don't know. But folks that are trying to drive this wedge there, some of them when they really get a little nuts, start to argue that Christians true allies are Muslims and Islam. This is where the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan Tate come in, who are these high profile alleged converts to Islam. I say alleged because they don't really seem to live a particularly Muslim lifestyle. But I digress. I really don't particularly care about their lifestyle, but there are people that are really trying to drive this wedge. And to your point, how can we possibly stand up against this? Well, look, the number one thing I think would be to not subscribe to the disseminators of this sort of information there.

Josh Hammer (33:18):

So someone who believes in the Jewish Christian Alliance, who believes in US Israel relations clearly should not be listening to the Candace Owens show at this point. I would argue you should not be listening to the Tucker Carlson show either at this point. He has clearly shown himself to be a profound skeptic at best, or an enemy at worst, of this particular relationship, which really is tragic. I was a massive fan of Tucker Carlson's for a long time. So it brings me no particular joy to arrive at that dismal, frankly conclusion. But reality is what it is, unfortunately, and sponsors, people who are sponsoring these particular programs, there should be made to feel pressure. And some of these are going to include taking on some of our friends, our friends, who might not be paying as close attention as folks like me and you who care a lot about these issues and do see what's going on here.

Josh Hammer (34:09):

We do see that the long-term gain plan is to drive this wedge between Jews and Christians, and you have to basically speak out and say, this is really wrong, and you should not be sponsoring this. You should not be listening to this there. And then the flip side of that is you should be flocking to those publications, those journals, those podcasts, those shows and everything that do value this. And the same thing is true, by the way, for your private life. So if you are a Jew and you go to a synagogue that has something bad to say about our Christian friends, you should not be going to that synagogue. And similarly, if you're a Christian and you go to a church that is anti-Israel, or God forbid, anti-Jewish, you obviously should not be going to that church. So there's things that you can do in your private life too.

Josh Hammer (34:55):

You can try to publicly demonstrate as much as possible being friends with Jews and Christians. I mean, it is very personal for me. Actually, this is in the book a little bit, but my best friend from childhood was a religious Christian. And to this day, many of my best friends are religious Christians. Literally to this day. I mean, we're talking here about groomes men at my wedding. So I mean, it's very personal to me. I feel deeply, deeply passionately about this actually. And I think just the way that you live your private life, your personal life can oftentimes just kind of set a good example and kind of that book of Isaiah Light unto the nation's kind of way as well.

Mark Tapson (35:33):

Your book is a clarion call for a Jewish Christian to preserve Western civilization, as you've discussed today. I had author Melanie Phillips on the show recently. In her book, the Builders Stone argues that in fact, only a Jewish Christian alliance can preserve the West. And I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think it's a critical partnership in combating what David Horowitz calls the unholy alliance, the Red Green Alliance of the Progressive left and Islamic fundamentalists. Do you see any challenges for Christians and Jews in us fostering this kind of alliance?

Josh Hammer (36:07):

Yeah, I think that there are a lot of challenges. So some of them we've just named, right? I mean, some of them come from people within the right of center, folks like the aforementioned Candace Tucker, and a lot of people who have these sorts of views, who are deliberately, it seems like on a dayday basis, trying to drive this wedge between Jews and Christians. I mean, as a conservative personally, this is one of my foremost areas of concern because it's happening within my own proverbial house. There's only so much that I can do to control the crazies on the left other than just to exhort them and to urge them to be less crazy. But when the crazy is coming from inside my broader house, that's when I start to get really quite a bit more concerns. So that is a massive, massive problem. It's one that I think about a lot, and I would like to think that my book will help to solve some of these wounds that have been open, but it's going to take a lot more than just one book.

Josh Hammer (37:01):

Of course, it's going to take a very sustained effort from a lot of people over probably a very long time to try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. And then of course, yes, there is the left, and the left is a massive problem there. I mean, the left has this whole, some folks called this Red Green Alliance. That's how UD Jaser has referred to it there in an op-ed that he published at Newsweek with us some years ago. Now, this Red Green Alliance between the Socialists or the Marxists and the Islamists there, I mean, this is by definition completely antithetical to the Bible, completely antithetical to anything remotely resembling a Jewish Christian alliance there. So the left is 1000%. It's an enemy to this coalition that I am arguing on behalf of there. And then even within the coalition itself, talking here about certain Jews and Christians, I think that there are deeply problematic actors among both camps.

Josh Hammer (38:01):

So in the Jewish camp, well, of course there are some nominally purportedly Jewish far left actors, folks like the so-called Jewish voice for peace, folks like that who are just, I mean, just as wretched and abominable as it gets. I guess how I truly feel about them, mark would probably be too peasy for this program. But I mean, I have very choice words in my private lot to say about these sort of scoundrels and miscreants there. So they're a massive problem there. And then you even have some other Jews who aren't necessarily as transparently self hating and suicidal, frankly, as those folks are, who to this day remain skeptical of a Christian alliance for frankly very silly reasons for this notion that, oh, grandpa couldn't get into the country club down the street back in the 1950s because his name was Goldstein or Rosenberg. And I mean, you still do hear this come up, especially among certain older generations of Jews who have an old enough memory to remember that.

Josh Hammer (39:02):

But that simply just has to end. And then on the other side of the equation, speaking of the Christians, well, a lot of more theologically liberal Protestant churches have come out over the past 10, 15 years as being pro BDS or just more Israel skeptical or anti-Israel. That's a massive problem. Of course there, the evangelical churches, from what I can tell, tend to still be quite good. But there is the younger evangelical generation, which is not anti-Israel by any means there, but is more agnostic on the question perhaps than their parents or their grandparents' generation there. Part of this, I think, is again, due to the outsized influence of some of these other voices that are trying to drive a wedge there. So the pro-Israel Proje, proje Christian Alliance voices need better ways to disseminate our messages, which can be tough when you're dealing here with loud platforms like Tucker Carlson. Frankly, Joe Rogan these days is having on a lot of questionable guests. So these are not easy things to solve overnight. But I'm optimistic still. I mean, the polling is very much still broadly supportive there. We have a lot of work to do, but I remain pretty optimistic for whatever it's worth.

Mark Tapson (40:21):

Excellent. Josh, what can, we've kind of touched on this a little bit, but what can the average person, the average ordinary person who cares about the west unraveling before our very eyes do? What are a couple of practical solutions that we can undertake to help re-empower or revive the west?

Josh Hammer (40:41):

Well, I'm a big proponent, and before I go on, I should probably say I have not always lived up to this ideal, although I would like to think that I have in more recent years as I've grown up and matured. And Mark, my personal story is actually very much in this book as well. I don't talk about a whole lot in these interviews because it's not necessarily what the listeners want to hear, but I did try to seamlessly incorporate my personal story into the book as well. There's like a whole chapter dedicated to it, but it kind of winds through. It very much weaves its way through out there. So my personal story is essentially someone who grew up in a very deeply assimilated environment there. Yes, I knew that I was Jewish from an early age. It was not a tremendously important part of my identity.

Josh Hammer (41:27):

I literally did not know what a Shabbat a Jewish Sabbath dinner was until I was in my teenage years. So I was quite removed from anything remotely resembling authentic Judaism until really into my early adult life. And then in more recent years, I've become more observant. Praise me to God. Married had our first kid and so forth there. So I say all that because part of my answer to your question as to what we can do, I really genuinely do think that it starts at home. I am a big proponent of don't just talk the walk, but to actually walk the walk. And as I just said, it took me a little while to actually kind of fully intuit this and channel this and actually do it. So I don't want to be accused of hypocrisy or anything. But at some point, the rubber really does meet the road.

Josh Hammer (42:15):

And if you actually believe in this, if you believe in our biblical inheritance, if you believe in this sort of stuff, if you're a G, you actually should go to synagogue. If you're a Christian, you actually should go to church. You actually should do these sort of things that you profess there. You should get married, God willing, you should have children, God willing. These are the sort of things that you actually can do. And little by little piece by piece, it actually is these small actions of many of us doing, many doing these small things in our private life that I think in the aggregate then will help to shift and turn back the tides of society that might be heading in a more unfortunate direction there. So that's not a crystal clear answer, but I think that it is, honestly, probably the most important thing is just lead a biblical life to the extent possible, to the extent possible lead the kind of personal life that you seek to envision on a geopolitical stage when it comes to this Jewish, Christian, Judeo-Christian biblical alliance and so forth there.

Josh Hammer (43:16):

And then the other thing, just to kind of touch back on what we were saying earlier, there is everything from your venue of worship where you go to pray to the shows that you listen to there, frankly, even to consumer purchases. I mean, think about where you're buying your auto insurance, where you're buying your clothes. I don't like that we live in this world, but we do live in this world, and that's just the reality of where we're at right now, and you have to think of whether or not you're giving your money to an organization that does not support your values and does not support your cause there. I mean, this has been a tough thing for me to intuit there. I used to just not think about this, and now I have, our hand has been forced there. So that's another thing that I think is very important as well.

Mark Tapson (43:59):

Josh is, my listeners will tell you, this is one of my favorite questions. Do you think we in the west today are engaged in spiritual warfare?

Josh Hammer (44:07):

Spiritual warfare against who? Against ourselves or against our enemies

Mark Tapson (44:11):

Engaged in, I suppose, in an angels versus demon ways?

Josh Hammer (44:16):

Well, yes, I do think we are. I mean, because there really are actual satanic diabolical forces among us. I mean, look, when I see someone like Candace Owens as she at some point last year actually promotes the literal old school, medieval blood libel, this notion that Jews kill Christians and then use their blood in various rituals, this monstrous lie that led to, I don't even know the number of Jews that were slaughtered in the name of this horrific libel back in medieval Europe. I mean, when I see things like this happening in the year 2024, I guess the case was in that particular instance there. I mean, it's hard not to conclude that there is real evil at work here. We can call it the Satan. The Satan, as we would say in Judaism, we can call it the yet Sahara, the evil in clinician, whatever you want to describe it as.

Josh Hammer (45:09):

I mean, this is evil at work. There is real evil here. There are deeply, deeply sinister forces that are at work around us, and I don't want to miss the forest for the trees. The majority of that evil is not coming from within our house. It is absolutely coming from the left. I mean, so much of the pro-abortion fanaticism, the transgender phenomenon, this notion that a five, 6-year-old boy or girl was not born in his or her right body. I mean, this is genuinely evil stuff as well. So there is a lot of evil among us. Fortunately, mark, I remain pretty convinced that the solution to so much of all of this is right there in the old book. If we just went ahead and popped it open and read it perhaps one more time, really, I'm not trying to advance anything particularly radical in this book, Israel and Civilization. I'm really just trying to argue on behalf of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Mark Tapson (46:09):

This was your first book, and I know you're in the process of promoting it, but do you have another one in the works, even conceptually?

Josh Hammer (46:15):

Well, look, you allude to this at the outset. The book has been, it reached a high of number three book on all of amazon.com, the day before release, and then on release date. Literally the whole website, the Hunger Games was number one, and some self-help book was number two, I think. And the reaction has been great. I mean, there's been a back order essentially since then. Amazon just got a massive shipment over the past week and a half, two weeks, so they're probably going to need more. So I mean, the reaction has been very positive, frankly, more positive than even I expected. So yes, I mean, I think it would be foolish for me not to try to seize on that momentum and that clear market and not try to come up with something else there as to what exactly that is. I couldn't tell you, I'm going to let the dust settle on this a little bit before getting back to the drawing board and working on a new book proposal.

Josh Hammer (47:07):

But there will be a new book proposal probably sooner ish rather than later. If I had to guess, I think the most logical thing would be some sort of thematic, I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I'm tentatively thinking it might include me leaning a little bit more heavily on my legal background, something about the rule of law, the American constitutional order, the biblical origins thereof, something along those lines, because my legal background does come out in this book at times there, but not as much as it could. So I think a similar-ish book that is a little bit more oriented towards constitutionalism, towards an American political audience there could potentially, I think, be successful.

Ed Bonderenka (47:53):

Great.

Mark Tapson (47:54):

I'd look forward to that.