Rising voice Josh Hammer unearths the religious treasure in his own backyard

Photos: Josh Richy

A friend of assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, kippah-wearing Josh Hammer — Newsweek editor, author, and host of a weekly talk show — exposes a woke left and makes the case for pro-Israel conservatism in a world where it’s increasingly under threat

Just two months before he was felled by an assassin’s bullet in a killing that shocked America, conservative political star Charlie Kirk took to the stage to host a debate on Israel. The event, hosted by Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA, at the Tampa Convention Center, pitted conservative commentator Josh Hammer against Dave Smith, a libertarian provocateur. Twice, while moderating the exchange, Kirk paused to address the crowd himself:

“There’s a rise in some disgusting stuff online…this dark Jew hate out there,” he said, “I hate it. It’s not good. And [to] everyone in this audience, guys, don’t get yourself involved in that. I’m telling you, it rots your brain, and it’s bad for your soul. It’s evil.”

The rise of very dark, anti-Semitic forces on the right was something increasingly on the trailblazing leader’s mind as he approached what in retrospect were his last days. The man he shared those fears with — yarmulke-wearing constitutional attorney and Newsweek senior editor-at-large Josh Hammer — was so concerned about that very topic that he’d written a book about it.

The day before he was killed, Kirk told Hammer that he planned to speak about the latter’s new book, Israel and Civilization, on this tour. The book makes the bold case that Western civilization depends on the moral clarity offered by the Torah, and that Israel stands on the front lines of that civilizational struggle.

That speech never came. With the crack of an assassin’s rifle, Kirk was gone and Josh Hammer was left to soldier on alone.

His ability to do so was hard-won, because Hammer’s encounter with Dave Smith wasn’t his first clash with the controversial figure. When the two debated earlier in the year at Princeton, Hammer had stepped onstage with lawyer-like confidence — prepared, polished, armed with citations. He left that night humbled when a post-debate survey showed he had lost the argument, despite all that.

“I thought facts, logic, law, and history would carry the day,” he admitted. “But no. We live in an age that feels like a post-truth era, and sometimes you have to go in with a visceral, emotional appeal.”

So here in Tampa, Hammer came armed with more than just arguments. After Charlie Kirk introduced the sparring partners and allowed Smith some opening remarks, Hammer reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded paper. The audience leaned in.

Printed on the sheet were Smith’s wildest tweets about President Trump. Hammer began to read them aloud, one by one, to a receptive MAGA audience of conservative students. The former lawyer had turned the debate into a cross-examination.

The crowd went silent before they started jeering Smith. The mood was set. Smith was booed twice — once for his tweets calling Trump an “impotent president” and “a war criminal who should be in jail,” and again when he argued that “you can’t be pro-life and pro-Israel in Gaza.” Hammer, on the other hand, received no boos at all.

Still, the cheers that greeted his opponent at the outset had stung.

“It’s not fun to hear the other guy get some loud cheers,” Hammer told me.

But he quickly added the lawyer’s calculus: The real jury wasn’t in the room.

“I think about Antonin Scalia’s dissents — he isn’t writing to get under Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s skin,” he says, referring to the two late Supreme Court Justices. “He’s writing for the classmates who’ll read that dissent ten, 20, 30 years later, hoping he’s proven right. That’s my mentality too — you’re playing for the eternal memory bank of the Internet.”

That was the lesson he’d absorbed after Princeton. The debate isn’t really with the man across from you. It’s with the broader audience, and with posterity. Hammer’s goal that night was not only to land a blow but to leave a mark, to set down a record that would still stand long after the applause faded. A rising Jewish star on the right, Josh Hammer is staking out new territory as a young pro-Israel conservative in a world where that view is increasingly under threat.

In the process, he’s written not only a bestselling and important book, but also a guide on how to do it — all as part of a personal journey toward greater religious observance.

In such a struggle, victory doesn’t last just one night. And as his debate with Smith showed, the fight isn’t just with progressives — it’s increasingly with voices on the New Right who see Israel as baggage, not a cause. To truly win the fight against ongoing negative and harmful online attacks on Israel and the Jewish People as a whole, you must set the record straight in a way that endures.

Hammer tries to do that by rooting his argument in what he calls “nationalist realism” — the idea that nations defend their own interests first, but when those interests align, the alliance is all the stronger. He’s not just making the case for Israel; he’s making the case that Israel’s survival serves everyone who still believes the West is worth preserving.

But the real debate — the one that explains why Josh Hammer matters to his audiences, and why he matters to our readers — hasn’t been with Dave Smith or even Charlie Kirk’s audience.

It’s been with himself. It is about truth, about faith, about whether revelation or reason can hold up a civilization.

And that debate began long before the stage lights turned on.