(TP-as shared here earlier; this is “Gaslighting.” Or typical right-wing revisionism so common with Hazony and his allies of The American Conservative magazine, Claremont Institute, Heritage Foundation, and a related think-tank professing “Realism and Restraint” :-)
Q: You write in a number of places about English philosophers from the 15th and 16th centuries who read the Bible and from it they came to their ideas of nationalism and freedom. Others will claim that here you are adopting a Protestant-Christian reading of the scriptures, something that is not entirely in the spirit of Judaism.
"When people in the academic world tell me that 'we had no impact on the world of politics in the West,' I show them that there has been a tremendous Jewish impact on the West, which also occurred due to a number of important Protestant thinkers, whose reading was based on the 'p'shat' (the plain literal meaning of the verse) of the Biblical text. That doesn't mean that everything that the Christians adopted from us has authentic Jewish roots, but the messages that I am talking about are indeed deeply rooted in our tradition."
Q: Conservative speakers in the West often talk about the "Judeo-Christian tradition". What is your take on that term?
"I never use that term," says Hazony, disapprovingly. "Judaism is one thing and Christianity is something else entirely. These are very different religions and the confusion between them is not good for us or for them. Biblical and rabbinical ethics do not extol weakness; while Christianity, from the New Testament to the important Christian thinkers throughout history, systematically tries to say that being a poor person is a good thing, and that we should 'turn the other cheek' to the enemy. However, it is important to know that today not all Christians agree with that. Currently, it is important for us to nurture the shared interests with the Christian world that seeks this; we share a common belief in one God and in the sanctity of the Bible. Having said that, I never hide the fact that I am a believing Jew. When Christian colleagues ask me whether I think that Judaism has the edge over Christianity, I say to them: you should begin by learning the tradition that you received in your churches, but remember: the most direct path to God is Judaism."
Q: And just how well does this go down with them?
"Well, as you can clearly see, I am not everybody's cup of tea."
The successors of Roman imperialism
Dr. Yoram Hazony is one of the most outstanding intellectuals of the conservative right in the US and Europe. He is a highly sought-after interviewee on various stages across that camp. In Israel, he is known as one of the founding fathers of the conservative discourse. In the nineties, he was one of the founders of the Shalem Center and the now defunct journal Tchelet. The meteoric rise in Hazony's status among conservative circles worldwide occurred mainly after the publication of his book "The Virtue of Nationalism" in 2018. "I was in the middle of writing a book on God, when in 2016, only three months before the referendum on Brexit (the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union), a colleague from abroad who predicted just how nationalists in Britain and Europe would be attacked as 'fascists,' phoned me and said, 'put everything else on hold and write something about nationalism.' So, I sat down and began to write."
His main argument in the book is that in contrast to historical imperialism, a world order founded on nation-states, the roots of which Hazony identifies in the Bible, as we have said, is the most ethical order of all. The idea of the nation-state is the subject of attacks today from liberal and multinational institutions such as the UN and the EU, as well as from the progressive left and the "Islamic supremacist movements," as Hazony refers to them, which have penetrated the West. He regards them to be the material successors of Roman imperialism, brimming with the fundamental tenets of Western culture and competing with its biblical heritage, which places national freedom on a pedestal.
In the National Review, the established flagship magazine of American conservatism, the book was described as one that "would become a classic." The late British philosopher, Sir Roger Scruton, told Hazony that his book had been released just at the right time and had "changed the public atmosphere only a moment before it was too late." The Financial Times even reported that American diplomats had distributed the book to their German colleagues to explain the US policy regarding Europe in the era of President Donald Trump. "When Trump declared himself to be an American leader who 'believes in nationalism, this was only two months after my book was released. I am not saying that this was because of me, I never got to meet with him in person, but I do believe that the atmosphere that the book created turned the term 'nationalism' into one that was now easy to re-identify with," says Hazony.
About two years ago, Hazony published an additional book, "Conservatism: A Rediscovery," in which he describes the relationship between the Bible and Ango-American conservatism as the tradition that stands up to counter liberalism and reveres the God of the Bible, the nation-state, family values and a social hierarchy based on respect and honor – compared with the liberal aspiration for equality. These bedrock elements, claims Hazony, are vital for the West if it desires to survive the current crises that have erupted as a result of the liberal tailspin into which the West has been plunged since the end of the Second World War.
One of the liberal ideas that Hazony critiques is the "social charter," according to which all forms of national amalgamation result from the decision of individuals to come together, and this may be abandoned when the state no longer serves the interest of the individual. "According to liberal propaganda, a people is born when the individuals choose to join forces and to conclude a 'social charter.' In other words, the people do not exist before it has an official state, he explains. "In practice, from a historical point of view, there is not one single state that has been established in this manner; there is always a situation in which a people exists before its nation-state is founded. For example, there are 30 million Kurds, a people that has been in existence for hundreds and perhaps even thousands of years without a state. So, does it not exist as a nation? And there are numerous other examples of this. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and a people or a nation is not merely a collection of individuals. Despite that, the liberal perception has educated the West into looking at reality in that way.” (TP-See Willmoore Kendall, and the Republican Segregationist Conservative Ideologues spun off from him."
Q: Your book creates a feeling that a society seeking to live and thrive cannot allow itself to be liberal. Do you agree?
"Yes, I really do think so. In other words, liberalism is a philosophy that does not address the main question that a society seeking to live must address: what needs to be done to maintain and bolster the good things we received from our fathers for the sake of the continued existence of future generations. When I was a young high school student, I said to a girlfriend that just as my forefathers prayed and thought of me when they lived their lives, so too I will live my life while dedicating my thoughts to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I have never forgotten her response. She said to me 'I can't believe that you are walking around the world with all that baggage on your back!' In her defense, I should say that she was the product of the liberal education that surrounds us. It is no coincidence that those circles who laid the foundations of liberalism, such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, or Spinoza, did not lead a family life themselves nor did they raise children."
Q: What is the place of individual freedom in a well-ordered society?
"In the right dose, individual freedom is a vitally important value, but when you make individual freedom into the be-all and end-all, then every public question is met with the same answer: Is there any reason to maintain and preserve our boundaries? Individual freedom will tell you no. Is there a good reason to educate our children to serve in the military? To celebrate the Shabbat, festivals, and other important events for our collective Jewish identity? It is always the same answer – the individual should decide what to do with his life. When you espouse only that value without adding additional components to public life, the liberal government collapses within the space of two generations, simply as it has no mechanism that knows how to preserve traditions that are vital to society."
It is the same war
Q: Today's world is no longer liberal, today we are already deeply entangled in the revolution of the progressive "woke" movement. So why still attack liberalism?
"You are right. If in the sixties you would have spoken with leading liberals, they would not have thought that they were about to launch a revolution against all spheres of society's existence, but everything is now already there. For the last three generations, liberalism has been winning everywhere. The first thing that it did was to convince the masses that they needed to remove religion from public life. The US presidents at the time of the Second World War, Roosevelt and Eisenhower, on a number of occasions said that they regarded their war against the Nazis as a 'war for Christianity.' Can you imagine the current US President Joe Biden saying something similar today? Back in the sixties, following the legal rulings of the US Supreme Court, Bible studies were removed from public schools and were made illegal. Since then, religion has been afforded less and less respect in American public life."
"Following the fall of communism, we thought that Marxism was a thing of the past, but then professors from the deep, radical left began to appear, equipped with neo-Marxist theories according to which society is built from a struggle between groups of oppressors and oppressed, and there is no choice for the oppressed but to revolt and to destroy the ruling class that is oppressing them, whether these are men, whites, and following October 7, the Jews too. Precisely as the liberals currently have no tools to fight against the Islamic supremacist movements in the West, so too they will lack the tools to prevent the neo-Marxists from taking over the universities in the USA."
Q: How do you understand the alliance between the left and the Muslims? At a glance, these appear to be two opposites.
"In order to understand that bizarre alliance you really need to know that it has foundations among neo-Marxist thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse, who believed that in order to launch the revolution it is necessary to make a pact to unify all the oppressed. Thus, transgenders can ostensibly demonstrate on campus together with Muslims, against the 'privileged' white Jew."
"Since the riots following the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, a real 'cultural revolution' has been raging across the US," says Hazony, using the term to describe the 'cultural revolution' in China, which was conducted under the communist regime of Mao Zedong and led to the eradication of all traditional fundamental elements in Chinese culture. "Instead of the slow infiltration of new ideas into the cultural mainstream in the US, an active revolution is being staged – in the New York Times, at Harvard, and throughout all the other liberal systems in America. Its declared objective is the destruction of the conservative whites. Their explicit dogma is to overturn and destroy the West. They are trying to take control of the Democratic Party and later on the White House, and for the moment they appear to be succeeding."
Q: What is the place of the Jews in this cultural revolution? The Jews were considered to be part and parcel of the US success story.
"For about three years, the progressives succeeded in running this cultural revolution without having to address the Jewish issue. But since October 7, they have launched a new front against Judaism and Zionism. In practice, they are trying to throw out the liberal Jews from the liberal institutions in order to get rid of the 'oppressive rule' against the minorities in the US. Our war against Hamas has an additional front in the US, against the left and the Islamic supremacist movements. We need to understand what some on the American right have already begun to understand: it is the same war."
The Chinese threat and the Indian hope
Towards the end of 2016, a short while after the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections, and only several months after the British people had decided to break away from the European Union, Hazony and his colleague Dr. Ofir Haivry, together with additional partners from around the world, took part in founding the National Conservative Movement. Some fifty academics and journalists were invited to a closed conference in New York, where the movement was launched. Since then, it has held a series of conferences around the world, attended by a whole array of the who's who from the global right; from Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, to the renowned British journalist, Douglas Murray. This week, the movement held a conference in Brussels, Belgium, and a large conference is scheduled to be held in Washington in six months.
"The conferences are a tool, the essence is to give conservatism intellectual backing and to persuade people that there is ideological depth behind their basic intuitions," says Hazony. "People in Europe think that they are out of order if they do not support incessant immigration of Muslims to the continent, or that they don't want the EU officials in Brussels to run their lives. We have active members in all democracies, from the USA to India, and the objective is to restore the importance of the nationalist perception and to link up conservatives from different countries. I absolutely regard the movement's activity as strengthening democracy around the world, as there is no democratic life without nationalism. History has no democratic empires."
"Since the end of the Cold War, there has been conscious consent among all the large political parties in the West that there is a need to eradicate the borders, and that nationalism is anachronistic. In 1992, all the European states signed the Treaty on the European Union, better known as the Maastricht Treaty, which essentially led to the foundation of the European Union. It was against this background, that Israel's former president, Shimon Peres, spoke about a 'New Middle East' and began to initiate the Oslo peace process. This was a cheap imitation of the liberal utopianism that had taken over European thinking at that time."
"A similar process occurred too in relation to China; suddenly the West 'discovered' that China no longer needs to be a communist pariah state. In 1997, Hong Kong was handed over from British to Chinese rule, and China entered the World Trade Organization. This was a decision that emanated from precisely the same logic of the Oslo process: the West's desire for a liberal utopia without any enemies or borders, with everybody gladly embracing the rational order of thin liberalism. In practice, with its own hands, the West built up the Chinese into being its toughest enemy since the Nazis. This state of mind was curbed to some extent in the West in 2016 – in Europe by Brexit, and in the US following Trump's unexpected presidential election victory."
Q: On the Israeli right, many regard Europe as a lost cause and wonder if it is at all possible to repair the damage there. Do you agree?
"I agree that the situation in Europe is difficult, perhaps even dire. If I were to wager as to what will happen in Europe based only on what we can see today, then the Western world will probably not be able to contend with the domestic Muslim and neo-Marxist threat, as the only tools it has to do so are liberal tools, which are not really capable of confronting these threats."
Q: If that prophecy of doom is fulfilled, what will Israel do? At this moment in time, we fully understand the importance of the few alliances that still remain with us in the West.
"Firstly, we do need to look the stark truth squarely in the eye: "Wherever the belief in God and respect for the Bible and the Christian tradition are lost, there is no vacuum; this almost always gives rise to antisemitism. This is the reason why the revolutionary left is awash with antisemitism. Historically, the main reason why the US, Britain, and the West in general chose to help Zionism was its respect for the Bible and the contribution of the Jews to the West, as well as the belief that God will help the Jews." Once this has been taken off the table, you can look at Israel as an anachronistic project of a strong nation-state preventing a much weaker group from attaining self-determination."
Q: That is a prophecy of doom, where is the prophecy of comfort?
"It is important to remember that God is omnipotent. We humans are not so gifted at knowing what the future holds in store. Nobody predicted the fall of communism and the world market crash in 2008. We must believe that we can do what is possible, and if we are able to do the right thing, then maybe God will save us. I draw hope from meetings with nationalist and Christian groups, unbelievably staunch supporters of Israel; it doesn't matter whether this is in England, Hungary, Italy, or the US. I have been profoundly impressed by their determination and willingness to struggle against the strong forces of the global left. Every one of these people is seriously concerned about the future of his nation and they are really not sure that they will be able to win, but they are investing everything they have in the effort to do so. It is precisely because we are the people of the Bible that we must help them. If there is any chance that the European countries are to recover and regain the status of something that is capable of communicating with us, then we must invest in this effort. Many of the right-wing circles in Europe have a clear philosemitic and pro-Zionist tendency, and many of them have never even visited Israel. This is the most important objective of all."
From a global perspective, Hazony points to an additional source of hope: "Even if Europe and the US are finally completely taken over by the left, I have a hidden hope in the form of India, which is currently a significant source of support for Israel. Many Indians admire Israel as a nation-state that stands on its own two legs against Islamic supremacism and succeeds in creating technology and progress combined with its ancient tradition. If we fail to promote and expand our relations with the Indians this might well turn out to be a serious missed opportunity that we shall regret for generations."
Coming out of the conservative closet
Q: From the impression you have gained, has your movement already begun to set in motion the wheels of change?
"'The National Conservative Movement' is an ideological movement rather than a political entity, so we are not looking for rapid results in the field. Having said that, the conference that we held in Britain last year served as a catalyst to revive the members of the UK Conservative Party. The party, headed by the current UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is currently in power – but this is a party that is conservative only in name. Part of the party is actually liberal and another part is even neo-Marxist. While the majority of its voters are in favor of limiting immigration to some extent, for example, they are unable to do anything about it. Our conference was a watershed event; prior to it, talk about the failure of the Conservative Party was heard only behind closed doors. Many felt that the party had been emptied of any real content but were reluctant to come out with this, as they feared that they were alone. Some fifty speakers attended the conference. All of them came to the podium and said one after another, 'I have been holding back for years, but can no longer do so: the Conservative Party has failed.' Everybody 'came out of the closet' on that issue, some of them in relation to the very fact that they were conservatives."
"Many people in the academic world feel that if they speak out in favor of the nation-state, religion, and family values – they will be dismissed and thrown aside, left with no existence. It was a tremendously powerful experience when fifty people, some of whom had never dared to speak about this in public, began to talk about conservative values. For many of them, Israel is no less than a model state. "We wish that we could be like Israel' – is something you hear everywhere across the global right. In a country with a high rate of natural increase, a large percentage of the population fasts on Yom Kippur, holds a Seder on Passover, gets married at a religious ceremony, and serves together in the army. As far as they are concerned, this is something quite inconceivable. It is a pity that the opinions voiced by these people are not heard in Israel."
About two months ago, the British weekly The Economist dedicated an extensive article to the National Conservative Movement. Alongside the critical tone of the article, it did acknowledge the movement's strength and warned of its influence. The main criticism leveled in the article related to a claim of ideological confusion among the movement's rank and file: some of the figures in Europe's right-wing movements, such as France's Marine Le Pen or Holland's Geert Wilders, who in the name of secularism are bitter critics of the spread of Islam across the continent, in the name of that same ideology also put forward ideas of freedom and LGBT rights. This is in stark contrast to other figures on the conservative right who tend to underscore the strict Christian line and are staunch opponents of those very same rights.
"First of all, in that article, they did have the decency to point out that we are not 'fascists', and that in itself is some form of progress," says Hazony. "Having said that, there are people who intentionally try to mislead and confuse matters when they are actually crystal clear. I do not get upset by this; the movement has a very distinct and coherent statement of principles signed by more than eighty conservative leaders. In contrast to the considerable lack of clarity that exists in the world today, such as the pact between Islamism and the neo-Marxists, the values that we stand for are precise and well-defined: in favor of nationalism, against continued mass immigration, in favor of family values, religion and fond respect for biblical tradition."
Q: Perhaps the ideological line is still not sufficiently clearly defined, which might give way to populist ideas. Do you agree?
"We are not looking for any rigid ideological uniformity. In contrast to what is written there, also on the topic of the transgender revolution, which threatens not only family values but also the very existence of a stable human identity, everybody in our movement understands that this is part of the neo-Marxist revolution and that this is a component that might destroy everything we hold dear."
Q: There are also antisemitic parts of the European right. How do you deal with that?
"Yes, there are also antisemites, both on the right in Europe and the US, and we are perfectly aware of this. But we must put these matters into proportion: the danger of antisemitism on the right today is no more than a grain of sand compared with the danger of antisemitism from the left."
Q: This current war has shown us that there are opponents to Israel in the American right too. For example, the popular journalist, Tucker Carlson, who is closely associated with Trump and Russia's President Putin, and who has been leading a constant approach against Israel since the outbreak of the war. He too spoke at one of your conferences. What do you say to that?
"At present, almost all members of the right in the US have a pro-Israel tendency and support Judaism, but that really doesn't mean that this will remain the case forever. There are those who are working in the opposite direction, so it is imperative that we continue to work among them and do our utmost to ensure that they stay with us. I don't wish to turn Carlson into an antisemite. On occasions, when people are presented with the correct information they change their minds. For that to happen, we need to maintain more of a presence there."
Q: Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is also part of your movement. At the time of the fierce dispute on the judicial reform, Orbán was depicted as a sort of semi-dictator as well as a close ally of Putin. Orbán's Hungary was described as a threat, something that Israel might turn into should the reform be passed. What do you think about this?
"Orbán has one source of gas for his country that passes through Russia. If we were in his shoes, would we really be looking to enter into a war with Putin? Today, he is investing considerable efforts into turning Hungary into an energy-independent state, a move that will also reduce his dependency on Russia. As regards the accusations that Hungary is not democratic, that is absolute nonsense. I have visited Hungary on several occasions and have met not only with Orbán but also with dozens of figures from his administration. All of them, without exception, are staunch supporters of democracy. Hungary is a country with freedom of _expression_ and freedom of religion."
Q: Jews in Hungary say that Orbán is bad for the Jews. What do you think?
"Following my first meeting with Orbán, I had a long meeting with the heads of the Jewish community in Budapest. I sincerely tried to understand just how Orbán is bad for the Jews there. I told them that what they were describing to me was the best situation of the Jews in Europe, so why did they believe that Orbán is bad for the Jews? They told me that 'He is fighting against George Soros (a Jewish Hungarian-American tycoon, who donates large sums to human rights organizations and liberal groups around the world). I told them that all conservatives around the world are fighting against Soros and that the fact that Orbán is doing so is a good thing."
Staying at aunt and uncle's place
Yoram Reuben Hazony was born in Rehovot in 1964. He grew up in New Jersey, to where his family emigrated due to the academic career of his father, Yehonathan, a professor of computer science who worked at Princeton University. "Though I did not hail from a religious home, my parents did have a leaning towards tradition," he recounts. "Zionism and the love of tradition were ingrained in me from an early age. My grandparents, the Hazanovich family, came to Israel from Poland and Ukraine at the end of the 1920s. My father was raised in a pro-Ben-Gurion home and he went to the 'HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed' (The General Federation of Working and Studying Youth) youth movement."
Another figure of influence was his father's brother, who lived in Elon Moreh and was one of the founders of the settlement of Kedumim. "When I was just a boy, my father used to tell me that we do not adhere to Jewish tradition as a Jew really should do, and that if I wish to know just how a Jew should live, I should go and visit my Uncle Yitzhak." At the age of 18, Yoram came to Israel with the Zionist youth movement Young Judea. He would spend his time on Shabbat and the festivals with his Uncle Yitzhak and his Aunt Linda, who at the time lived in an extremely minimal, "cubicle-sized" apartment in Elon Moreh with their six children, and they demonstrated to him how a model Jewish home should be. It was here that he made up his mind to make Aliyah and to become an observant Jew.
"I used to drag along my friends with me to spend time on Shabbat and festivals at Elon Moreh, and that drove the program directors crazy, as they didn't want them to visit any settlements. Even back then, I took the position of youth provocateur in a more conservative, Jewish, and Zionist direction," says Hazony with a wry smile.
During the time Hazony spent studying at Princeton University and the exposure to the culture of his American peers, he felt a growing urge to voice conservative opinions. At Princeton, he founded a conservative journal that caused a stir on campus, which continues to be published to this day. His girlfriend from college, Julie, converted to Judaism and eventually became his wife. Yoram and Yael, as she is now called, are the parents of nine children and currently live in Jerusalem. At Princeton, Hazony also met his future partners, who would share a staunch Zionist and conservative outlook, make Aliyah, and establish the Shalem Center – Daniel Polisar and Joshua (Josh) Weinstein.
In 1993, Hazony completed writing his PhD thesis at Rutgers University in New Jersey on the subject of "The Political Philosophy of Jeremiah." Later, he published a book on the political philosophy of the Book of Esther as well as another book, "The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture." He has authored a number of additional books and publications, some of which deal with the study of Zionism.
"My study at Rutgers involved a unique experience, which in today's prevailing political and cultural climate of silencing opposition voices that has taken over the universities, is something either extremely rare or even impossible for conservative students to enjoy currently," says Hazony. "I was the only conservative student in the class. The lecturers and almost all the students were liberals. I remember how in a certain course, in which both the students and the lecturer were Marxists – precisely when the students began to get irritated at my questions, the lecturer actually encouraged an open discourse in class. At the time, it was still possible for an orthodox Jewish student to speak his mind in class and to take part in a civilized discussion. Nowadays, the academic establishment in the West has turned into an instrument of oppression that is not willing to accept even one conservative professor. The situation now has radicalized and gone downhill, as they are constantly seeking to even push out those liberal lecturers who do not toe the line with the rising absurdity of the progressive left."
Hazony's impression of the situation in Israel is not much different. "The academic world in Israel is no more than a branch of global academia. All the humanities and social sciences faculties in Israel are rife with competition between the philosophies of neo-Marxism and liberalism. Here too, there is hardly any room to even consider studying ideas that point towards a more conservative direction."
After they made Aliyah to Israel, the Hazonys lived in Eli, a settlement in the Binyamin region, north of Jerusalem, and Hazony began to write the Jerusalem Post's editorials. In 1991, the then editor of the newspaper, David Bar-Ilan, paired him up with Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Deputy Foreign Minister; Hazony was an advisor to Netanyahu and also served as an assistant researcher working on Netanyahu's books "A Place under the Sun and Fighting Terrorism." Their working relationship lasted for five years and then their paths parted, while Hazony continued to fulfill his dream of establishing a "Jewish Princeton," as he put it.
"Our objective in founding the Shalem Center was to shore up Zionism," he says. "Today it might be difficult to remember, but in the nineties, the prevalent atmosphere was one of post-Zionism and of debunking national myths." In 2000, he published his book "The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul," which sparked much debate, mainly among the Jews in the US. One of his claims was that leading cultural icons such as Amos Oz and David Grossman belong to a post-Zionist elite that is aiming to pull apart Israel's Jewish identity. This was an elite, he claimed, whose roots could be traced back to such ideological heavyweights as Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, and Gershom Scholem, alongside additional German-Jewish intellectuals who regarded the establishment of the state as a deviation from the path of Jewish ethics.
Back to the Scriptures
For eighteen years, Hazony served as president of the Shalem Center, one of whose key ventures was the journal Tchelet which was published for sixteen years and featured articles with content of an extremely rare type: right-wing, Zionist, and intellectual. The Shalem Center succeeded in pushing the envelope for the Israeli right also thanks to a series of Hebrew translations of classic works in the field of political philosophy. He recruited both public figures and people from the academic world to take part in his activity, some of whom are identified with the Zionist left, including the renowned professors of law Ruth Gavison and Amnon Rubinstein.
Following the disputes on the path being taken at the Shalem Center, which in the meantime had evolved into the Shalem College, Hazony left the institution. Since 2013, he has been serving as President of the Herzl Institute, which he founded. He hosts researchers from Israel and around the world for study programs and seminars. Hazony is currently considering establishing an academic institution to study the political ideas in the Bible. "In the academic establishment, there is an underlying tendency to cut out the roots and they make sure to conceal the biblical foundations on which the West is built," he says. "We need to establish new institutions where it will be possible to research and teach freely the political ideology of the Bible. We have much to give to the world and are far from having exhausted all the political messages in the scriptures. Such academic research can only take place today in an independent institution."
Q: Many regard you as being the person who laid the foundations for the conservative discourse in Israel. How do you see the institutions of the right in Israel after the failure of the judicial reform?
"In my opinion, the current ideological situation is akin to 1993, after the Oslo Accords. One sunny day, we woke up to discover that the entire ideological map was about to be turned on its head, and there are currently no strong institutions that know what to do with the situation. There are many good people in the conservative right in Israel. From an organizational point of view, the right's ideological institutions were dealt a severe blow over the last year. We must now focus our efforts on recovery and rebuilding."
Q: There are people on the right who did support the reform in principle, but who thought that the manner in which it was being implemented was too revolutionary. Do you agree?
"I really do not share such views; the judicial reform was intended to restore the judicial system in Israel to a state of health, and to roll back Aharon Barak's 'constitutional revolution,' which changed Israel's constitutional tradition without transparency or engaging in any discourse. The beginnings of that effort can readily be seen in the articles of critique of the doctrine of activism adopted by the High Court of Justice published in Tchelet."
I asked Hazony what his ambitions are, as a thinker who seeks to have an impact on Israeli society, alongside his international activity. "Truth be told, I have never intended to be involved in Christian countries," he replies. "My wife and I made Aliyah to Israel to contribute here in Israel. In 2016, I was sucked into the world of Western ideology. There was nobody else to pick up the gauntlet and deal with this; the truth is that at that time I thought that Israeli society was in a much better position than that of the West, so I had no pangs of conscience. After October 7, it is clear to me that the situation has changed and that there is much that needs to be done. I am ready to pitch in and play my part wherever I am needed."
