Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West

by Josh Hammer

A next-generation manifesto declaring that the fate of Western civilization depends on the security and thriving of the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel—that the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland demands a realist foreign policy, strong US-Israel relations, and a grand alliance of Jews who stand firm and Christians who recognize the centrality of Judaism to the West

Israel is the West's man on the spot—the tip of the spear in the battle against Islamist terrorism and secularist nihilism alike. But the old-guard voices advocating for the full support of Israel as a nation-state and as an idea are being drowned out from all sides—theistic, secularist, right, left, and everything in between. To combat the uproars of multiculturalism, postmodern relativism, tolerance, and Jew-hating social media, the time is now for voices from a new generation. We must address modern antisemitism and sound a call not just to accept, but to enthusiastically embrace the centrality of Judaism to the very character of Western civilization. We require a grand alliance: namely, Jews who stand firm and Christians who recognize the civilizational foundations they have built on.

In Israel and Civilization, acclaimed journalist, legal expert, and pundit Josh Hammer makes a righteous case that the key to the prosperity of the West is the flourishing of the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel. Hammer's uplifting offense is our best defense against the enemies of the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. And as Hammer makes clear, manifesting the promise of Israel requires action by the United States and its allies.

There can be no overstating the impact of the trauma of October 7, 2023, on the Jewish people. Yet the anti-Israel reactions the world over have been equally devastating. Rallies of hundreds of thousands explicitly or implicitly promoting Hamas violence; demonstrations of Ivy League professors celebrating the pogrom as awesome and exhilarating; so-called human rights organizations that refuse to unequivocally condemn the use of rape as a weapon of war; and a hydra of multiculturalism, postmodern relativism, and tolerance—it all threatens the physical and metaphysical survival of the West and our essential Jewish heritage.

Preserving the best of what's been thought and said throughout history and ensuring that there will be centuries more requires a West that is proud of its Jewish heritage. In other words, the continued existence of the Jewish people is inextricably tied to the endurance of Western civilization. Israel is the center of the battle, and Israel and Civilization explains why and how the Jewish state must win.

Genres: History, Politics, Israel, Nonfiction, Middle East, Religion, Audiobook

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 18, 2025

Reviews

[Karina]

Trash… lies… brainwashing. Horrible person. Lies about Charlie Kirk to self-promote. Worst book I’ve ever read and I’ve read some shit books

[Susan]

Josh Hammer makes some good points regarding the Jewish connection to western civilization. I may not agree with al of them, but this books would lead to some great discussions.

[Castles]

My main question throughout this book was - who is this book for. For jews, it sure is a great motivational talk. But otherwise, I’m not sure any other reader would really be interested in the theological lane Hammer takes throughout major parts of this book. The point is, he’s really articulating in details the real religious reasons behind the claim that Israel is in fact the front line of the west, and the keeper of the judo-christian shared values. Why is that strange to me? Because I’m not optimistic about how much the haters and wokers even barely care. Who are you going to convince?

Interestingly enough, the opening chapter connecting Treblinka to the massacre of October 7th is exactly the connection I personally made with my recent reading list. And so I totally know the place where Hammer is coming from.

Refreshingly, this book was written after the outcomes of October 7th, and even after the outcome of two Iranian attacks on Israel, the fall of Assad, the eliminating of nasrallah, the pager operation, etc. but there are two flaws in this book I’ve noticed.

One - writing about inner politics of Israel (judicial reform protests, etc), well, just don’t go there. and also, don’t quote one of the most controversial person among Israelis, Yair Netanyahu. I get the macro pov of an American jew, and in fact I support it and I think this is what more Israelis should adopt these days, but for most Israelis this is just beyond weird, for explosive domestic reasons which are almost unexplainable to people who don’t live the daily Israeli political tension on the day to day basis.

Two - trump. Hammer is in favor for trump, describing him as the ultimate pro Israel president that we’ve had in recent decades. he has good reasons to believe that, regarding the Abraham accords. But, these days in his second term, blinded by Qatar’s gold, I’m not sure trump has written his own final verdict in his pages of the history of the jews. As much as this book is impressively updated, Hammer just couldn’t possibly predict trump’s recent very worrying trip to the Middle East and Qatar, the recent strange cold diplomatic shoulder to Israel, and the talks with Iran which might just end up with a deal not very different from Obama’s ministration, the same deal Hammer condemn. We shall have to wait and see, and I very much hope I’m wrong.

In fact, Netanyahu’s doctrine that that Abraham accords will bring peace first from the outside of Israel and only after from the inside with the palestinian conflict, might have proven completely wrong regarding the October 7th massacre. This problem is here, and it’s here to stay.

[Vann E. Schaffner]

Very educational. In am not ignorant about the Jewish faith and Israel, but this book was very good in explainng the faith from the Jewish perspective. Most useful was the explanation of various Jewish religious and political groups and why so many Jewish people are progressive.

Parts are slow going and very intellectual, but worth getting through as background for later chapters.

[Joe B]

A book that pretty much summarizes the plight of antisemitism on the Jewish people and how the world believes “a story” and not “the story”

[Caleb]

Perhaps no other issue is so discussed inside conservative circles as the role of the Judeo in the Judeo-Christian foundation of our civilization. Israel can be both a uniting force and a dividing one; one that politicians use when appealing to our foundations, and one which radicals use when trying to tear these foundations down.

One of the loudest and most prominent voices in the defense of Israel is Josh Hammer, and in *Israel and Civilization*, Hammer, a practicing Jew, makes his case for why Judaism should remain at the center of what Western civilization stands for.

At the outset, Hammer makes clear that he is writing a book as a practicing Jew. It cannot be held against him that he brings this distinct view into play in making the case for his argument. The problem, I believe, is that Hammer does not immediately make it clear that he is writing *for* a Jewish audience, which could and should have been made clear early on in the book, at least not explicitly.

The argument Hammer makes follows this rough thesis: Western culture is in decline; it’s being attacked on three fronts by three different enemies: the Islamists, the wokeists, and the globalist neoliberals. Hammer doesn’t bother giving a definition for any of the three, though the first two are fairly self-evident. In each of these three areas, Judaism is being attacked first, and it, Hammer asserts, is the main bulwark, the main defense, and the main weapon vital to defeating all three.

At times autobiographical, at other times historical, and sometimes simply political, this book is a melee of ideas, assertions, historical narrations, and personal anecdotes, all of which serve, in different ways, to defend the thesis Hammer wishes to make.

Raised in a secular household, Hammer makes clear that his family was what might be called “spiritual but not religious,” a concept he will loudly and vociferously criticize later on in the book. Unlike those who discover their faith and then order their traditions, practices, and beliefs around those, Hammer says that he moved the other way around, from a secular but still traditional Jewish family into a religious and practicing individual. The fact that he has to state this plainly lends some credence to his proposition that this is the way to go, the way to rescue the assimilation of Jews into the cultural mainstream. This is the solution to the problem, he believes, applied to the individual.

Hammer next moves to explain in great detail the consequences of not acting. He does this by reflecting on his visit to a German concentration camp, and then to one of the kibbutzim which was attacked by the hordes of Muslim jihadists on October 7th, 2023. This point must be well-taken; Hammer does not simply give an emotional appeal, does not simply recount the horrors of these two places, though he does that, but he clearly shows how exactly the thought processes, the ideology behind radical anti-Semitism, led to these frightening and horrific places.

Hammer then moves on to explain the ideological background, not only of anti-Semitism, but also, he affirms, of the global neoliberalism which he sees as rotting the Judeo-Christian foundations. Moving from the Enlightenment down to the present day, Hammer uses the arguments of Yoram Hazony and the rhetoric of Patrick Deneen to deliver a stinging critique of the classical liberal order which he sees as going in lockstep with the liberalization of religion, especially with the rise in Judaism of the Reform movement. Hammer is much more knowledgeable than I am about the liberalization of his faith, and whether the timeline matches with the rise of classical liberalism in the political realm, but, at least in Christianity, such a timeline by no means lines up, and the fact that the political liberalism of Locke and the religious liberalism or radical autonomism of the French philosophes, or of Jewish rabbis, were addressing fundamentally different spheres of human life, and also in active opposition to each other, is one which is either overlooked or consciously left out of the narrative. Hammer’s political criticism, based heavily on Hazony’s *The Virtue of Nationalism*, dismisses Locke, and thereby Jefferson, as anthropologically dishonest. By including as liberal everything from Reform Judaism, to the political formulas of Locke and Strauss, to the epistemological rationalism of the Enlightenment, to the Hegelian idealism of Woodrow Wilson, Hammer, and with him Deneen and Hazony, include almost everything but explain nothing.

Hammer attacks the emphasis on “Reason” of the Enlightenment as dishonest and neglecting what he sees as one of the most necessary of human virtues, what he calls “epistemological humility,” but since when has this been seen as a virtue? Not being sure of reality is certainly the antithesis to Cartesian rationalism, as Hammer believes it to be, but far from being an antidote to the former, it instead falls into the trap of Kantian uncertainty, and gets from somewhere, however mistaken that somewhere may be, to nowhere at all. Epistemological humility is simply a synonym for saying you don’t know and you don’t care to know. Hammer seems at times to treat the recognition of human limitations as though it were itself an argument for the authority of tradition. It is not. One can reject rationalist hubris without abandoning reason as the means by which we distinguish truth from error.

Even further, in making the case not merely against liberalism, but more fundamentally, for a common-good conservative Judaism, Hammer falsely equates the ancient principle of a people, as in the people of Israel, with the modern principle of a nation-state, ignoring the obvious differences between the covenantal nature of Ancient Israel and the mixed societies of the present day, which do not have laws from the Mountain of God, or a direct nation-divine relationship open to them, as the Jews did and do. Hammer takes a descriptive attribute of Ancient Israel and turns it into a prescriptive solution to the modern state.

That said, Hammer’s argument that self-confidence in one’s own abilities is fundamentally at odds with Western civilization is a necessary and vital point, not only in Judaism, but also in Christianity. “Idolatry,” he writes, “is perhaps the single greatest offense committed against God—the Second of the Ten Commandments, and the first hortatory one—because it denies His sovereignty over His own creation. Paganism, the opposite of the Bible’s monotheism, evinces solipsistic self-worship and/or a misplaced trust in false gods.”

Hammer also spends time talking about the Jewish political system, instituted from Sinai, and then codified into the social consciousness of the Jewish people for millennia. Making the postliberal argument in its fullest form, Hammer asserts that Judaism itself exemplifies the only true alternative to the atomization of the individual and the loss of binding mores that he thinks go hand in hand with liberalism. He believes that Judaism is the perfect balance between the individualism that is necessary both to protect the individual from the community’s overreach and to hold an individual accountable for his actions, and the necessity of community, and the ensuring of communal holiness and responsibility that places individualism in check. Of course, his argument is broader than simply encompassing what Christians call the Old Testament, for he cites Jewish authorities and other writings in making his case, but as any philosophical claim, which are by nature unfalsifiable, it is necessary to see how exactly the theory worked out in practice, and if Scripture is any guide, it didn’t. That isn’t a criticism of Judaism per se; it certainly isn’t meant to reflect badly on the Jews themselves, it is simply a reflection on humanity, on human nature in general: the fact remains that throughout the Bible, the Jewish people failed continually: the persecution of the prophets, disbelieving the word of God, failing to live up to the moral standards imposed on Sinai: all of these things point not to a failure in the law or the Lawgiver, not even something fundamentally wrong about the theory itself, but it does reflect on the fact that even the best and most well-intentioned of systems simply fail to deliver on what they promised. And that may be precisely the problem with Hammer's political argument. If Israel's possession of divine law did not prevent Israel from repeatedly violating that law, why should we expect the recovery of Jewish political principles to produce the virtuous political community Hammer seeks? The failure may not be that we have chosen the wrong system. It may be that no system, however wise, can make fallen men virtuous merely by placing them under better laws. Hammer also tries to reassert the importance of Jerusalem on Western Civilization, a good move, but by doing so to the extreme in which he does it, he underappreciates and undervalues the contributions of Greece and of Rome, which played an equally important role in the ideas of the Founders.

So does Hammer give a more modern subpoint to defend his thesis? Indeed he does. Confessing that Abraham Lincoln has long been one of his greatest heroes, Hammer quotes the sixteenth President at length, including showing some fascinating connections between Lincoln and Jewish leaders of the time. Hammer also quotes from the Founding Fathers, such as Hamilton, John Adams, and George Washington, in showing the role of Jewish thought in the formation of the nation, from Washington’s letter to the Jewish congregation of Rhode Island, to Ben Franklin’s desire to include a picture of the Exodus on national emblems, to the role of the Ten Commandments, the Noahide Laws, and other ethical imperatives on the moral foundation of the nation. This succeeds in planting his argument back on firm ground, not in that his previous arguments were unhelpful or wholly devoid of accurate diagnosis, but simply in being able to connect Ancient Israel with modern America. The problem with this, though, is that he accidentally undermines his own point. Lincoln, Hamilton, the Founders whom he so loves, were explicitly liberal in outlook: that is, they embraced natural law republicanism, the form of government by the consent of the governed laid out by Locke in his treatises. Hammer replies to this counterpoint quickly by pointing out that all of this could equally be traced back to Judaism and Christianity, and well they could be, and should be, with Locke as connection between them. Hammer applies a seeming double standard here in saying that the Founders were not formed *ex nihilo*, and got their ideas from somewhere other than themselves—ostensibly treating Locke as almost simultaneous to them—but then denies Locke and the classical liberals the same courtesy by failing to note that they got their ideas from the same place.

The last critique Hammer makes is perhaps the most politically volatile. Growing up in the shadow of 9/11, he was a Bush interventionist, a neocon, with all the moral rigor implicit in the name and all the certainty and conviction that led to Iraq, Afghanistan, and twenty years of conflict. However, Hammer seems unwittingly to have swallowed the forever wars myth pushed by politicians almost constantly in the past couple of decades. Even more concerning, he equates Bush’s push in Iraq and elsewhere as the same as Wilson’s plan in the concluding years of World War II. Hammer hammers Paul Ryan, the former Speaker of the House, for claiming that he wanted to bring liberty and freedom to every nation, and that he was concerned about dealing with any nation that didn’t embrace the American values, the very Judeo-Christian values which he is somewhat contradictingly defending. In doing so, Hammer accepts the relativism of the radical left, in saying that Ryan is wrong because American values are merely values, and that other nations have other values, and we can’t all expect to live under the same systems. In doing so, Hammer simultaneously degrades Western civilization to merely a set of values” while upgrading every system, from the radical Islam which America fought in Iraq to the communism of China and the authoritarianism of Putin, to a set of values, even though they are likely value-free. Very much like his ploy with epistemological humility, Hammer disguises his ideas under the same guise as the woke neoliberals he seeks to critique: as simply human, simply tolerant, simply realistic, and thereby forfeits the entire premise. He seeks to avoid the temptation to remake the world in America’s image, but ignores the fact that all men are made in God’s image, and are thus equally entitled to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. His dismissal of the idea of America as a credal nation is his lone attempt at dealing with the fact that Americans aren’t so different from anyone else, and neither, for that matter, are Jews, Poles, Russians, or anyone else. The point I am trying to make is not to argue for universalism, but simply to point out the inconsistency in his desire to argue that Americans shouldn’t wish freedom on all people, as if we are fundamentally different. We are different, but only insofar as we affirm the creed of the Declaration.

The solution for the author is not a doctrinaire Wilsonianism—indeed, he writes, it is not a doctrine at all—but, quoting Walter Russell Meade, a Jacksonian realism; an emotional connection, like love of one’s family. This explains everything but explains nothing: it is contradictory in that in the very next paragraph he argues that: “Only a ruthless, emotionally detached, hardheaded realism that eschews any desire to remake the Middle East in the image of Western liberalism can get the job done.”, but if it’s based on an emotion, how exactly has it be emotionally detached, and as everyone knows by self-evident experience, emotions alone are prone to change at every turn, even love of one’s family, which can turn to hate very quickly given the right circumstances. Lastly, as with liberalism, Hammer seems to include a very broad range of political movements inside this field, which would include people as far removed on the political spectrum as Bill Clinton, Dennis Ross, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Hammer argues that neoconservatives have been pushing for a two-state solution which ignores the needs of Israel with regard to Palestine, but it seems far-fetched to call either Bill Clinton or Yitzhak Rabin conservative, or even new conservatives. He then claims, unhelpfully, that neoconservatives aren’t even that great of allies to Israel, something that I, as a neoconservative, and many like me, from Lindsey Graham to Ben Shapiro, would strenuously object to. Certainly, neocons are more ready allies to the cause of Israel than the postliberals who have taken over on the Heritage Right and who now regularly disparage Hammer and Jews in general.

Hammer’s call for a united Judeo-Christian front is likely the best part of the book; we do have much more in common than that over which we disagree, and we do have common enemies. Hammer, quoting Pope John Paul II, says that Jews are the elder brothers of Christians. He is addressing a Jewish audience when he says this, but for Christians, Paul’s admonition in Romans should come to mind: we cannot be overconfident in ourselves, for we are the olive branch which has been grafted in by grace.

My final critique of this book is one which is outside of anything that Hammer himself, as a practicing Jew, could have fixed, and that is that while it focuses on those Jewish elements of Jewish religion on which Christians could agree, and which Christians share, this ultimately reduces Christianity to Judaism, while leaving Judaism intact. Decrepit human beings, however virtuous, if they are not religious, and by religious I do not mean what Hammer does, will fail to make the world any better than it has been for the last six thousand years of human history. His appeal to tradition, to a good society ordered around God and his law are all good for any society to consider, but they are ultimately bound to fail outside of the grace and redemption of Jesus Christ, who alone allows slaves to walk free, and the chained sinner to act as a saved citizen, not only of earth, but also of Heaven.

[Lon]

Perspective. Provocative. Unapologetic.

[Karen]

One of the most salient parts of this book - page 163 to 165.
Banalities [politicians stating Israel's right to exist and right to defend itself] are insulting. Speaks to a double standard. Is there any other nation in the world, other than the State of Israel, for which it is somehow considered a demonstration of support merely to take the side of the nation's right to exist and defend its territorial sovereignty against infringers and invaders? Does it make politicians pro-Canada, or Zimbabwe or any other country to declaim that they have a right to exist and defend itself from menacing aggression? Is there a politician in the world who feels a need to speak in this condescending manner about any other modern nation-state? For every other contemporary nation-state not named Israel, the state's legitimacy, right to exist and defend itself are simply assumed and undisputed.
There is no other minority [than the Jews] not the Kurds, not the Yzidis, not the Zoroastrians, nor anyone else in between, whose right to exist as a concrete nation and defend itself as a concrete people have been incessantly challenged as they have been for the Jews. And there is no other modern nation state - not Japan, Paraguay or Ghana, etc., whose right to exist and to defend itself are as continually challenged and doubted as they are for the world's lone Jewish state. There are many who claim that anti-Zionism - opposition to the State of Israel's existence as a Jewish state and a desire to see that Jewish state disbanded is somehow not equivalent to anti-Semitism. This is a lie. They are two sides of the exact same coin.
p. 182. There is no daylight between modern anti-Zionism and modern anti-Semitism. Just as the Jew was historically a scapegoat for all of society's ills, so too is the Jewish State of Israel often vilified today as the scapegoat for all of the world's ills. In order to defeat anti-Zionism as a political force...the underlying Palestinian Arab nationalist cause itself must be dealt a decisive and irrevocable defeat.
p. 195 The rise of virulent anti-Semitism is here, there, and everywhere a symptom that something has gone deeply wrong in a given society. p. 196 The single most pernicious threat facing the viability and flourishing of the Jewish people - and by logical extension, the flourishing also of Christian, the US and all of Western civilization as a whole - is the spread of woke ideology. Through DEI, an entire generation of impressionable minds has been indoctrinated into believing that Jews, the most frequently oppressed group of people in all of human history, actually constitute an "oppressor" class. Wokism is appallingly totalitarian, insofar as the woke wield the levers of power to suppress all dissident speech, root out all wrong thing and attempt to secure by brute force, a stifling intellectual homogeneity. It is a form of neo-Marxism, and neo-paganism - a return to the worship of the false gods of past millennia.
p, 201 The notion that the Jews today are somehow "colonizers" in their ancestral, millennia-old homeland is an ahistorical archaeologically disproven, and empirically debunked myth.
204-5 - But the wokesters also detest Christians, and above all, white male Christians. Without Christianity there would be no entity that we can identify today as Western civilization. It often begins with the Jews but, we know from history, it rarely ends with the Jews. And in this case, as in so many others, the explosive anti-Semitism we have seen since the Simchat Torah massacre is only partially ABOUT the Jews in the first instance. The woke mask has been lifted for all to see. There is no more hiding. We must all join forces to repel this terrifying social conflagration before it devours us all.
p. 249 - The Judeo-Christian tradition [in the US] is the only affirmative positive force capable of withstanding and possibly rolling back the three hegemonic forces that today threaten ruin for the West: wokeism, Islamism and global neoliberalism. It is no coincidence that, as regular church attendance has declined and secular wokeism has ascended in America and throughout the West in general, anti-Semitism has skyrocketed. In the year 2024, any Jewish American who throws in his lot with wokeism and not the one entity pragmatically capable of subduing wokeism, the American church, is foolish beyond measure.

[Portable Radio Show Host]

Israel and Civilization by Josh Hammer serves a specific purpose. The book is not only attempting to combat reactions to the actions on October 7th 2023, but is also trying to place Israel as one of the major inspirations for the American Experiment. Josh Hammer uses his own personal experience and the call for a Jewish Christian alliance to promote a realistic foreign policy attempting to help Israel which would further help secure the fate of Western civilization.
Hammer’s book has many interesting and key ideas that play a dramatic part in shaping his importance for Israel to the Western world, but his ideas about the foundation of the US in connection with Israel seems to be a stretch at times, as he selectively omits historical evidence. The foundation of the American Experiment did not begin with the Constitution, but rather began much earlier with the ideas of the pilgrims.
Hammer is correct in comparing their travel and struggle with freedom of religious practices to that of the Exodus story, but they were foundationally not Jewish. The pilgrims observed the Sabbath, but believed in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. They left on the mayflower to create a model Christian society, and did not think of the Old Testament as strictly Jewish philosophy, but the path of Abraham’s heirs before Christ. Their commitment was to Christ, a nature that is not agreed upon in most Jewish circles. Furthering this, Hammer writes, “The Law of Moses would go on to become the undisputed bedrock of Western legal codes, Western ethics, and in many ways Western political theory” (Hammer, pg. 21). While Hammer is not fully wrong, he fails to include the full reasons as to why these laws were important to early Americans. Biblical literacy in this time was exceptionally high, and remained that way, not for strictly religious reasons, but due to the accessibility of the Bible. The document Hammer should have started with to make this point is the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson writes, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” (DoI, Paragraph 2). Here Jefferson highlights the God-given nature of humanity. How we are endowed and loved by a single Creator, who has given us the nature to enjoy life here on Earth, not always necessarily to work. Furthermore, it is important to note what Jefferson means when he states “created equal”, Jefferson does not intend on equality of success or outcome, but rather the equality of opportunity. Equal chance is not equal prosperity, and furthermore is not a guarantee of the common good. These sound like great biblical ideals, until the next sentence. Jefferson continues, “That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their powers from the consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it” (DoI, Jefferson Paragraph 2). This is not the deep rich Jewish philosophy of the old testament, but mimics the cries of Thomas Paine in his pamphlet “Common Sense” and the fears of John Locke in his treatises. The Biblical aspect of the Declaration of Independence is not meant to promote a Jewish understanding of laws bringing people closer to their God, but rather emphasize the nature of having a divine spark meaning that one must make difficult decisions and separate themselves from governments that oppress or oppose this spark. In other words, the divine spark becomes the rational free will and free being of an individual, and suppressing this means to go against Nature’s intention as posed by Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence is a written list of complaints against King George the Third, a king who claims a divine right and position, thus by utilizing the European Enlightenment and the ideals of the individual, the Declaration of Independence served as a reminder of what all sought to achieve when it was released two years into the Revolution.
The next document that should have been shared is that of the Articles of Confederation. Using Hammer’s ideas of when a Nation “starts” or is “founded” this should have been the first document brought up that actually emphasizes the difference between Mercantilist colonies, and a new country involving united regions. The Articles of Confederation were largely written by Dickinson, who headed the committee at the time. The format was largely based upon that of Benjamin Franklin’s original “Constitutional” draft back in 1750 (See Bret Baier/Catherine Whitney “To Rescue the Constitution”). Dickinson was a Quaker, and his early drafts reflect this, putting forth ideals such as the basic rights of women, free release of all slaves in the territories, and protection for the native Indians (Bret Baier/Catherine Whitney). However, very few of his key ideals were actually adopted, and instead they were taken out in order to have a more baseline and less Quaker filled Constitution. The early Articles of Confederation, adopted in November of 1777, focused on the justice and friendship of states and their individual members. It promoted the powers of the states, and limited the powers of the centralized government, in accordance with late European enlightenment literature. It was not Biblical by any aspect, and instead wanted to hold the strict democratic and particular nature of the time.
When we arrive at the Constitution the backdrop of the country is set on the European Enlightenment, advances in modern political theory, and the deep distaste for the British Monarchy and their economic advances, not so much Jewish philosophy. While certain Biblical aspects were present, it is important to note that they were more often than not thought of as Christian philosophy, or ancient laws commonly known due to the popularity and large scale printing of the Bible. As most of the founding fathers were Deists they did not have a deep religious affiliation in the modern sense of the word, and instead wanted to posit that God had created all beings, then left us to our own devices. Hammer cannot use this fact because denouncing the religious importance of the founding would denounce the religious aspect and Jewish importance of today. Hammer is over-emphasizing the Jewish nature of the Constitution and American Experiment so much so that his audience is willing to say that they would still be important things to consider today. It was not a single unified philosophy that outnumbered the rest, but rather the American Experiment is defined by the multitude and combination of many different peoples and ideas. In the Capital building, made to reflect the Greco-Roman ideal, there exist 23 marble portraits of the great law givers. Moses is present, but so is Hammurapi, Justinian, Innocent III, and Edward I. All vastly different people accredited to helping with the establishment of the nation as well as the formation and editing of the Constitution of the United States. Yet, no books are written discussing the importance of early Babylonian writings that discuss the punishments for faulty house-builders in the colonies. The American Constitution draws on human history and human nature to make a document that is willing to test the limits and expose our weaknesses as a species. Overemphasizing one culture in its creation misses the point, that it is an all encompassing document meant to form a new nation and new group of people. The Western World is connected to Israel, and will forever be, but our founding was not based on Jewish philosophy as Hammer wants it to be seen. It was made by Quakers, Puritans, natives, the Spaniards, and the effects of mercantilism. It was such a complex and detailed foundation that by leaving out the documents predating the Constitution creates a limited worldview which goes with Hammer's claims of Jewish philosophy being against the European Enlightenment. However, the broader story is a lot more complex, with most of the founding fathers affirming the individualist ideals of the European Enlightenment, Hammer seems to be inadvertently affirming Jewish philosophy against the founding ideals not explicitly stated by him. America is biblically based, but by many different people groups and beliefs meaning that while all use the word “Creator” or “God”, all are affirming differing dogmas. Hammer is a brilliant writer, and it clearly shows in his work. I recommend this book, but also pose that no one single book should ever serve as a basis for all beliefs. Reading this in conjunction with differing opinions, such as Sari Nusseibeh's work or even Ari Shavit, brings the fuller picture to the Western audience. His ideas are not a common belief in Israel itself and should be considered when reading this. Well written, but keep in mind the influences/political ideas, as well as comparing it to other works.

[Sari Hammer]

Great read! Check this out if you want to learn a thing or two

[Pat]

A must read. There is so much in this book; history, theology, world economic/ political structures, but at the same very readable. It's a clear warning that must be acknowledged as to the current state of our world and our future.

[Janelle]

Five stars doesn't seem enough for such a gripping book! Could not put it down! Exceptional in every way!

[Melissa]

Excellent read! Informative and well written. You will learn much about Jewish life and what it means to our Western way of life.

[David]

***.5

This was a tough one for me to rate. The author (who I've never heard of and about whom I know absolutely nothing aside from what he divulged in the book) has a very conservative worldview, and I strenuously disagree with most of his basic assumptions, opinions, and conclusions. However, he also makes a few very good points, and his arguments are mostly well articulated.

His basic premise is that Judaism underpins what he considers as Judeo-Christian Western Civilization, and that Torah and Halacha form the basis of American law. This Jewish-Christian alliance is opposed by the forces of Islamism, wokeism, and global neo-liberalism. He also rails against Marxism, socialism, leftists, liberalism, libertarians, progressive Judaism (reform, conservative, reconstructionist), and trans people, all of which are incompatible with "biblical values."

The result of this reasoning is strong support for religious nationalism, both in Israel and the US. He repeats many of the standard religious Zionist talking points, but as an attorney he emphasizes some of the legal arguments that legitimize the West Bank (aka Judea and Samaria) settlements. Unsurprisingly, he lauds trump and Pompeo for the Abraham Accords, castigates Obama for the Iran nuclear deal, and doesn't seem overly bothered by the horrendously destructive war in Gaza. In other words, nothing you wouldn't hear from the average Likud supporter.

More interesting was his reasoning for opposing the neo-conservative approach as typified by the Bush Administration. He's also against the regular ongoing US financial aid to Israel, which surprised me and is one of the few things I actually agree with him on. And despite his fawning embrace of republicans in general and American Christians in particular, he does a good job rejecting right-wing antisemitism, calling out odious figures such as Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, and Tucker Carlson, and makes a strong case for why Israel is beneficial to the US as an ally.

Ultimately, aside from being Generally Wrong (i.e. disagreeing with me), the inherent bigotry underlying his American Exceptionalism and Fox News-like attitudes towards DEI, is that the same religious nationalism he supports can also be reversed to support the Palestinian cause. He tries to dismiss their claims to the land as completely without merit, but even if that were true, it's certainly not how they see it, nor how most of the world sees it. Too much of the time, all he's doing is changing the names in the slogans - he doesn't see anything fundamentally wrong with slogans like "From the River to the Sea," he just thinks that it all belongs to his people, and not to them.

[Jessica]

Hammer offers a rigid, ideologically narrow case for American support of Israel—one that might have resonated across political and religious lines if he weren’t so dismissive of the vast majority of American Jews. While he sets out to defend the practicality of America's investment in Israel and Jewry with moral urgency, his tone toward non-Orthodox Judaism is condescending, alienating, and exclusionary.

Despite invoking Jewish history, Hammer neglects one of its most vital teachings: that internal division—sinat chinam—has historically undermined Jewish survival more than any external threat. His repeated dismissal of Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism erases large and vibrant parts of Jewish life that have long been committed to Zionism and Jewish continuity. The fact that he fails to acknowledge thriving non-Orthodox Zionist efforts—like Recharging Reform Judaism, the Pardes Institute's North American work, or Livnot U’Lehibanot—suggests not only a lack of information, but a deliberate ideological blind spot.

He calls leading Jewish advocates like ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt a "disgrace", dismissing their work without grappling seriously with their contributions, especially in combating the rise of right-wing extremism that Hammer himself denounces. This contradiction weakens Hammer's credibility and undercuts his broader strategic arguments.

Equally concerning is Hammer’s uncritical embrace of Donald Trump. While he praises Trump’s foreign policy regarding Israel, he fails to address how Trump’s political rhetoric and permissiveness toward extremism contributed to a surge in American antisemitism long before October 7th. This omission signals either strategic evasion or selective moral concern—both of which diminish the ethical authority Hammer seeks to claim. Hammer's framing of gender roles and power also warrants attention. His repeated use of gendered theological language (e.g., referring to God as “Himself”) further reinforces a limited and exclusionary worldview, one that many contemporary readers—especially women—will find alienating.

What could have been a serious contribution to the pro-Israel discourse is ultimately a polemic aimed at reinforcing ideological purity. Instead of mobilizing a coalition, Hammer alienates allies. America needs persuasive, strategic defenders of Israel—but it also needs humility, pluralism, and the capacity to listen. Those values are glaringly absent here.

[Rodney Hall]

I have very mixed feelings about "Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West" by Josh Hammer. On one hand, it offers an important and much-needed perspective. On the other, it’s written in a way that makes it difficult for the average reader to access those ideas.

If the author’s goal was to demonstrate his intellect and command of dense policy language, he succeeded. If it was to engage and educate readers who aren’t attorneys or policy insiders, it falls flat. Many, I suspect, won’t make it through the long, heavy first chapter before giving up.

The tragedy is that Hammer’s insights are genuinely valuable—but buried beneath complex phrasing, lengthy chapters, and needlessly intricate sentences. If he hopes to reach a broader audience, I’d suggest studying modern writing techniques that favor clarity and brevity. The ideas deserve to shine without requiring a dictionary and a pot of coffee to uncover them.

[Tina Trent]

ashtonishingly inaccurate. unfathomably biased. filled to the brim with hasbara and other brainless talking points often regurgitated by neoconservative and far right politicians and commentators. fails to acknowledge even a shred of the vast geopolitical context, including the Nakba and the 100,000+ Palestinian deaths caused directly or indirectly by Israeli forces between 1948 and 2014. contained very few (if any) peer-reviewed and/or verifiable sources and instead relied on propaganda websites, tweets, and bible passages. a clear example of someone talking outside of their depth and thinking their identity gives them infallible authority on a subject.

i could do with fewer references to the author's collection of concentration camp rocks. author is also a super freaky bootlicker by nature and says some absolutely unhinged stuff in here that i truthfully can't repeat or else i would be banned for violating moral and ethical guidelines.

read for my dissertation

[Beryl]

I am uncertain as to a rating so I’m ‘rounding up’. This work has several distinct sections. I appreciate the thorough research beginning with history, then more current events, literature, sociology, theology. The author states strong concerns and opinions. Some of which I agree with and some I do not. Others I am uncertain. Regardless of where I personally am at this moment, the author raises important concerns, issues, challenges and considerations that we must think about as individuals and discuss within our communities and outside our communities. I look forward to the dialogue and to continuing to learn and may it be in a safe environment.

[Rachel Grepke]

We know of the nation of Israel, but there are many fascets of the land we still don't really think about. In this book, Josh aims to help you understand the nation, the people, and the current climate of the world when speaking of Israel. While there were many words I had to look up for clarification, it was well written. It was a bit repetitive in parts, but overall still a worthwhile book to read and ponder on.

[Alexander]

70% of the Jewish vote supports the pro-Hamas Democratic party. Seems like American Jewry is their own worst enemy.
Interesting to see that Jews from Eastern Europe overwhelmingly support Republicans.
Probably because they have faced real Jew hatered. Not the mild anti-semitism that American Jews have faced such as being excluded from clubs, universities or hotels.
Unfortunately it may take things to get alot worse for American Jews before they come to their senses.

[Jenni]

Read this earlier this year. Started writing a review/summary but stopped after I felt overwhelmed after writing four pages of it, lol. I agreed with some points, disagreed with many others, and found some arguments to be intellectually disingenuous.

[Linda]

Thought-provoking. I don't agree with all of his ideas, but found many points well taken and important to state clearly, as he does. Even when I strongly disagreed with certain arguments, I found them worthy of reflection and consideration.

[Ed]

Very good.

[Reader]

An entire book of propaganda. What did you expect from Josh Hammer?

[Tara]

Got it because Charlie Kirk was really excited about this. Sucked

[Courtney Waters]

4.5

[Kevin]

Great book. Mr Hammer makes an an airtight case that we should support Israel in any way we can. As Israel goes, so goes the United States

[Karen]

Must read

[Bill]

Great work Josh. Thanks for saying what needs to be said.

[Jorden]

While it does make a decent argument for Jewish nationalism and the Western interests therein, it does not explicitly condemn the often exclusionary ethnic nationalism that fuels the current conflict in the Levant. It even implicitly embraces the idea of an Israel solely for the Jewish population with hypothetical borders that undeniably extend far further than what currently is considered to be Israeli territory in any treaty since 1947.

Therefore, I think an honest review should appreciate the depth of the arguments made while highlighting that the conclusion drawn from those arguments won't bring us any further in the current conflict. It is, after all, a purely ideological and emotive argumentation and it should be read as such.