Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Josh Hammer.

Josh is an American political commentator, attorney, and columnist. He serves as the senior editor

at large at Newsweek, where he hosts the Josh Hammer Show. In this episode, we talk about his

new book, Israel and Civilization. Josh and I have a lot of agreements about Israel,

but this conversation focused mainly on our disagreements,

in particular on the special status of Judaism as a set of religious beliefs,

and on the ethics of religious intermarriage.

So without further ado, Josh Hammer.

Thank you. So without further ado, Josh Hammer. Okay, Josh Hammer.

Okay, Josh Hammer, thanks so much for coming on my show.

Coleman Insight. It's a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for having me.

So I've read about two-thirds of your book, and there's a lot of interesting

material there to discuss. I anticipate we're going to have a lot of agreements about Israel,

Palestine, and broadly, who are the good guys in that story, and who are the bad guys in that story.

And then there's a lot of other topics where I anticipate we're going to have some interesting

disagreements like on the role of religion in history, the role of religion and reason in morality,

and some of the broader philosophical claims and kind of background that you're coming from as opposed to where I'm coming from. So I'm excited to talk about all those

topics. But before we do, can you give my listeners a sense of who are you, where are you from,

and what's the story that led you to write a book about, not just about Israel,

but about what Israel should mean to the West?

Yeah, sure.

So, you know, great to meet you, of course.

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