The Latest Secularist Best-Seller Attacks Not Just Religion, but Human Rights and Human Equality

June 25 2020

Published in Hebrew in 2011, and in English three years later, Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens—which attempts to tell the history of mankind in a mere 400 pages—has earned numerous plaudits, and gotten its once-obscure author invited to Davos and to meetings with Mark Zuckerberg, and even a television deal. To Mark Leib, many of the book’s arguments are indeed “eloquent and informative,” even “ingenious.” But few reviewers seem to have noticed its assault—made quite explicitly—on the values of the Declaration of Independence:

Throughout the book, Harari propagates a philosophy that is nihilistic to the core, disparaging every major religion, every claim of human rights, even the existence of meaningful altruism. The philosophy of Sapiens is so contemptuous of Western values that the reader is left with a stark choice: to be shocked or seduced. Which makes Harari’s adoption by readers in the millions worrisome.

[I]f, as Harari believes, . . . there’s no Higher Being to choose between Thomas Jefferson and Hammurabi, we have to admit that human rights are up for grabs, like fashion, cuisine, and television miniseries. The laws that protect individuals from false arrest, torture, and political murder are just someone’s fallible opinion.

Perhaps the response to Harari’s book is a kind of bellwether. Maybe the doubt, the disbelief, the void is more widespread than anyone dared think. With 12 million copies sold and the author lionized, what’s a reviewer who believes in the Torah and who reveres the Declaration of Independence to feel? In a word: grief.

Harari, born and raised in the Holy Land of Israel, thinks that God and God-given rights are a fiction. It’s true that his positions aren’t shared everywhere and that belief in divinely given rights can claim a certain momentum after three-and-a-half millennia. But as the familiar metaphor reminds us, cut flowers can retain their vigor for only so long. Sooner or later, a generation that has lost all faith in the God of the Torah will think that human rights are just one arguable opinion among others. And if that occurs, there’s no end to the possible damage.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Charles Darwin, Declaration of Independence, Human Rights, Judaism, Nihilism, Religion

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy