Josh Hammer: Defending Israel on the Right

This past election season, many Jews who formerly belonged to the Democratic party switched over and voted for Trump. They saw that far leftists, who were eroding their party, were leading protests against Israel and engaging in antisemitism on college campuses and city streets – and they took to the ballot box to speak their mind.

However, in recent days, the right has had its own share of infighting over funding foreign aid to Israel and the crackdown on antisemitic speech. Those on the far right and the far left have found something to bond over: their hatred of Israel and the Jewish people. Conservative political commentator as well as Newsweek’s senior editor at large Josh Hammer has been actively working on the right to combat this troubling trend.

“I increasingly see a lot of people online who are trying to convince younger Christians to abandon the Jewish people and any idea of an alliance between the U.S. and the state of Israel,” he told the Journal.

That’s what compelled Hammer to write his new book, “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” In it, he argues that the fate of Western civilization depends on Israel.

“My number one audience for my book is Christian Americans,” he said. “That is my bread and butter target audience. There are a lot of folks who are trying to separate Jews and Christians, the two Biblical religions, from one another.”

“There are a lot of folks who are trying to separate Jews and Christians, the two Biblical religions, from one another.”

While Hammer recognizes the strong Evangelical support for Israel from older generations, he believes that younger Christians are becoming more distant. He’s trying to reverse that troubling trend.

“If you look at polling on younger generation of Christians, they are not as enthusiastic about the state of Israel as their parents were, but they are not hostile,” he said. “There are no strong feelings either way. I try to remind them we have way more in common than we have differences.”

On the fringes, Hammer, who is active on social media – specifically, X – has seen that theologically driven antisemitism is popping up again and again.

“Charlie Kirk is a great defender of the Jews, but the fact that he’s getting questions on the Talmud from students on college campuses is deeply disturbing,” he said. “Theologically driven antisemitism is the scariest form of antisemitism. It’s small for now and ahistorical for the U.S. God willing, it will be tampered.”

For Hammer, a former attorney who worked at Kirkland & Ellis, the issue is deeply personal. Three months after October 7, he traveled to Israel and visited Kfar Aza, where Hamas murdered and kidnapped dozens of residents.

In the introduction to “Israel and Civilization,” he writes, “Entire rows of homes looked like they had been blown up with bombs. There were stray bullet holes everywhere. Mattresses, doorframes, kitchen utensils, and children’s toys were strewn about all over. The Israel Defense Forces had marked the homes according to who was either murdered or taken hostage. The accompanying photos of the young men and women—as with those we saw later that day in Re’im, site of the ill-fated Nova music festival—stared back at me, piercing my soul. These were young people—they had so much still to live for.”

After witnessing so much death and destruction, Hammer then came across a group of men singing and playing guitar. “I walked toward the sound, and lo and behold, there were two Haredi (‘ultra-Orthodox,’ in the tendentious words of most Western media) Jewish men strumming along and singing cheery tunes,” he writes. “Perhaps even more impressive, they were smiling while doing so.”

Hammer joined in, swaying back and forth with other members of his group. He reflects, “I’m not sure that I could have dreamed up a more perfect encapsulation of the Jewish people and the Jewish spirit. In that moment, I was reminded of the comforting words of Psalm 23: ‘Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff—they will com- fort me.’ And above all, I thought of one of our people’s refrains, three words that have defined our very essence amid countless oppressors’ attempts to kill us throughout the generations: Am Yisrael Chai—the people of Israel live.”

The author, who describes himself as a baal teshuva, makes a very strong argument in the book that eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, is completely inseparable from the Jewish peoplehood and nationhood. It is his goal to show the world this very fact – and to continue to be a proud and outspoken advocate for his people.

“The reason I quit the practice of law was to focus on what I do now because I care, above all else, about preserving and recovering the American experiment and defending the Jewish people and the Jewish state. These are the two things that drive me each and every day. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about advancing the things I truly care about.”