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:

When Harry Truman announced that he was inclined to recognize the fledgling Jewish state, George C. Marshall and other eminent foreign-policy advisers urged him not to, arguing that the new country would be a severe liability to American interests—a way of thinking that persists to this day. But, to the contrary, Israel has proved itself time and again to be an invaluable ally. Joshua Muravchik describes some of its important contributions to fighting the cold war: