Anti-Hamas protests have sprung up in Gaza after the ceasefire with Israel ended. Is this a sign that Hamas’ days are numbered, with both Israel and the people of Gaza standing against them? Glenn speaks with “Israel and Civilization” author Josh Hammer, who explains why “we still have a way to go to get to a Hamas-free Gaza.” Plus, he explains how this connects to the debate over Trump’s decision to deport Hamas-supporting Green Card holders, like former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and another student at Tufts University.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Josh Hammer from Newsweek. Senior editor-at-large. Host of America on Trial.
And the author of Israel and Civilization.
Kind of a small topic on that one, Josh.
How are you?
JOSH: Glenn, my friend, I'm doing great.
How are you, sir?
GLENN: Good. First of all -- tell me about the Gaza protests.
I mean, what kind of guts does it take to do that?
JOSH: Well, it takes tremendous guts. And it's tragic that I can some of the individuals, that we've seen thus far. Who have risen up against Hamas.
Have been thrown into prison already.
Or at least -- potentially one or two have been killed by Hamas.
I mean, this is not the -- unfortunately, Glenn. You're dealing with a totalitarian death cult.
That is trying to take Gaza back to the seventh century. And have
And, frankly, take whatever territory they can. And back to that time period as well. It takes tremendous guts.
Unfortunately, we still have a ways to go.
The West, that is, still has a way to go. To get to a Hamas-free Gaza. But ultimately, a Gaza that is totally rid of the Hamas jackboot, is the only kind of Gaza that can play any role for anyone! Jew, Arab, Christian, anyone there.
So Hamas will have to go. It will be a little bit of --
GLENN: Have you ever seen this before?
Because I don't remember this ever happening.
KEVIN: Honestly, I would really have to think. I mean, like nothing comes immediately to mind. Right?
I mean, they had their Civil War back in 2007. So Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Unilateral withdraws. One of the most tragic short-sighted decisions in retrospect in all of Israel's history. And then two years later, there's this bloody Civil War on the streets of Gaza between Hamas and Fatah. That's the purportedly more moderate group, led by (inaudible), if not particularly more moderate there. In fact, then around that time, during the Palestinian Arab Civil War in Gaza, you had anti-Hamas demonstrations. But for the most part since then, Glenn, and we're dealing with roughly 18 years at this point.
They have ruled with such an iron fist and a totalitarian jackboot, that demonstrations like this are certainly few and far between.
GLENN: Tell me about Tufts.
JOSH: Look, you're dealing here with people that have to go.
I mean, whether it's a situation. Whether it's this kidney doctor at Brown University. Whether it's Mahmoud Khalil. Whether it's this researcher -- I saw headline's out of New Haven, Connecticut.
I'm actually flying to New Haven tomorrow and giving talks at Yale University. I saw Yale Law School, is now cutting ties with a senior researcher there.
I prefer her questionable ties to a terrorist organization.
I mean, first of all, Glenn. What does it say, about our upper echelons of American education?
Tools like Yale, Columbia, Tufts, which is no academic slouch in its own right.
I mean, what does it say, that we're dealing with the level of miscreants and jihad connected actors on these campuses, that we're even having these conversations.
GLENN: Oh, jeez. I've been following Yale for years.
Yale had this going right after 9/11.
They were bringing people in that were jihadists.
STU: Incredible.
JOSH: They certainly were! And I think back to those first days as well in Harvard. After October 7th there, when there was thirty-two, 33 Harvard student groups. Whatever the exact number was, that came out in unison, to blame Israel for their own Nazi-esque pogrom that was inflicted against them there.
I mean, Glenn, sometimes I actually pause, and I'm not even making this up. I actually ask myself: If 9/11, God forbid were to happen today, would the faculty lounge at Harvard, Yale, and the schools like that, actually cheer for the United States, or take the other side?
I think it's an entirely fair question to ask. I genuinely don't know the answer.
Ultimately, these deportations proceedings, whether it's Mahmoud Khalil, whether it's the Turkish student at Tufts University, the kidney doctor at Brown. The law in this is pretty straightforward: If you're not a United States citizen, if you're anything from a short-term travel visa, all the way up to an LPR.
I.e. a green card. If you are anywhere on that spectrum. If you're an alien, you don't have the permanent right to be here.
You are simply here at the discretion of we, the people.
And as Justice Robert Jackson, who was actually the dissenter in the Japanese internment case of Korematsu. They called him the great dissenter because of that.
Even he said, in a separate 1953 case, called Shaughnessy at the Supreme Court.
He said that due process does not entail any alien with the right to remain here in the United States, against the national will. So the law is actually pretty straightforward.
What we're seeing here are the paracisms of this sprawling anti-Trump judicial insurrection. But over the course of time, these folks are going to get deported. I feel pretty confident.
GLENN: So I am very worried about.
For the first time, now. I think it's 47 percent of the American people are now backing Israel.
That's not good!
Especially when you look at -- I mean, your book talks about it.
Israel and civilization.
Israel goes down, those who don't support Israel.
It will not go well for you. Israel is fundamental to the west!
JOSH: And the book, Glenn. Israel and civilization.
Which you have such a beautiful blush for. And truly can -- thank you so much for that. The word Israel in the title is of something a double entendre.
Where it refers to the state of Israel. But also, to the children of Israel. The Jewish people.
As people understood, all throughout history.
You come for the Saturday people first, as a near steppingstone to get to the Sunday people.
So Karl Marx is actually a great example here. Karl Marx, one of the 19 century's most infamous self-hating Jews himself.
Has this infamously anti-Semitic treaty. It's called Omni-Jewish Question, which he publishes a few years prior to the Communist manifesto.
He's not mincing words about his dripping disdain for Judaism, the actual religion. But what was Karl Marx's actual goal? His ambition.
And thank God, thus far, an unsuccessful goal, has been nothing less than the overthrowing of Western capitalism and Western Christendom. These civilizations that Christians have built, off of the Judaic Jewish Foundations there. So Hamas and their charter from the late 1980s, the anti-Semites are very clear.
Again, you come for the original people in the book. And then eventually, you will come to -- to quote, the many years ago, referred to as the great Gentile offshoot of the original -- Moses, the children of Israel there.
And then looking at the geopolitical chessboard, the capitalist state of Israel is just the geopolitical version of this exact argument. They come for the state of Israel.
Whether that's the economic forum or the World Health Organization. The nine nations. The globalists, the transnational folks there.
They come for Israel because, again, Israel represents a shining beacon of the geo-Christian Western civilization. But another interesting point that I argue in the book, Glenn. They also come after Israel is because they are globalist. They hate the nation state. They hate nationalism. Isreal is actually the world's first real nation state, I argue. Going back to Biblical times.
When they unite the tribes of Israel in Jerusalem, that's the predecessor in antiquity to the modern post-1648 West nation state. So their diabolical credit, they're actually being kind of logically consistent here.
If your goal, à la George Soros, Open Society Foundation. Klaus Schwab is to eradicate all borders. I call it the geopolitical version of the John Lenin song Imagine, the worst song of all time. This notion that we're trying to eradicate all the things that makes us human.
It actually makes a lot of sense, that you would start with the oldest nation, that is the nation of Israel. So for all these reasons, and then more, Glenn, people who care about the West. Who care about the nation state.
Jews, Christians. All those who care about our joint shared intelligence.
You have to care about this stuff.
STU: Well, I mean, it's because of Israel, that we have in the Old Testament. That we have a personal one on one relationship with a God, that is personal to us.
Listens to us. Speaks to us, as individuals.
It's the beginning of the power of the actual individual, and the power against totalitarianism.
And kings, that are dictators. I mean, that's the source of all freedom. It starts there, in the Old Testament.
JOSH: It does. I mean, I argue in the book, Israel and civilization. That today what we call Western Civilization, actually begins with God's revelation to Mt. Sinai. The day that he brought his revealed word to a people there. And that so much that we take for granted today is directly downstream of that.
You know, Glenn, I have a very interesting example that I like to talk about.
Sometimes, in the past. Does and it's all horrible
But one thing we've heard from the left, Glenn. Over and over again.
They love to say. Nobody is above the law.
I agree with that.
I totally agree with that. Even more important, I have to ask our friends on the left. Do you guys know where that principle comes from?
The notion that no one is above the law. The king is not above the law.
That literally is from the book of Deuteronomy.
I sometimes wonder, if they actually understood that. If they understood the Biblical origins of everything today, just much more depressed they would be there.
The point of this book, Glenn. To call on Jews and Christians. To remember where we came from.
And to engage in nothing less ambitious than a joint and Biblical restoration project.
Because without that inheritance and without understanding that and doubling down on that, I genuinely do fear that we will not be able to turn back the tide against these very real hegemonic forces.
Wokism. Islamism. And what I call global and neoliberalism today.
GLENN: We're talking to Josh Hammer. He's from Newsweek, the editor at large. Also, his book is Israel and Civilization.
You know, I'm watching what's happening over in Europe.
And I just don't know what it's going to take. I don't know if you saw this.
But Marine Le Pen was -- was banned from running. They put her in jail, and then banning her from running for office in France.
That's not good.
They're just going to keep pushing people further and further and further, until you get really scary people.
And, you know, you've got these countries being overrun by Islamists. Not Islam.
Islamists. People who believe in Sharia law, and their way or the highway.
And, boy, I mean, how long before they will wake up, and do they wake up in time?
KEVIN: So I did see the Le Pen news. I wish I could say, I'm shocked. Unfortunately, I'm not shocked.
Because I have a high threshold for being shocked at this point. But whether it's France. Whether it's a very similar situation in Romania to their right-wing politician, a man named George Escue. Whether it's Donald Trump and the lawfare that we were just talking about here. Whether it's in Israel. Bibi Netanyahu is facing his own version of Deep State lawfare against him as well there.
All around the world, you see in these first world democracies, the Deep State, in overweening judiciary. They are dramatically overstepping, ironically, Glenn, in the name -- or the purported name of, quote, unquote, democracy. That may be the most ironic part of all of this there. When you see people like these judges and prosecutors in France, the prosecutors here in the United States.
People like Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith. They're always saying that what they're doing is in the name of the people. That what they're doing is in the name of democracy there.
But, you know, this too can relate back to I think the Biblical inheritance there.
Ultimately, when you understand, you were just saying, that there is a God. He is real. He is created in his image. And we can have a personal relationship with him, that he reveals his word. His truth. And so forth there.
When you understand this and you live your life according to that, according to those manners and those precepts and those values and so forth there, it puts your head in a fundamentally different place. And you're going to be much less likely, I think. To dramatically overstep your bounds there.
The American founders totally understood this, by the way.
And all of media said, American founders totally understood that without this Biblical foundation, where you understand that what happens here in this world is important, because we have free will. And you are endowed to free will by your creator.
But ultimately, it's subservient to something much more powerful there. That's why George Washington in his farewell address, that religion.
Not just fate, or not just morality. But actually revealed Biblical religion is the most indefensible safe guard for truth and Republican self-governance there.
And I do fear that we're starting to lose that, which is part of the reason I wrote this book. Israel and civilization.