The ethics, laws, origins and hopes of Western civilization are rooted in the history of the Jewish people and their unified way of life, Judaism. Why then has Western civilization for so long abused the Jewish people and, since 1920, their attempts to rebuild and develop their ancient nation? Why especially now when Israel serves as the West’s bulwark against terror, do western elites facilitate the destruction of Jewish sovereignty and of Jewish life in its holy places, hills, farms, and towns?

Eugene Narrett’s remarkable study looks to the composite roots of western civilization for perspective on these questions. His knowledge of ancient and modern history and his remarkable ability to integrate disciplines produce startling analysis and answers to the most pressing issues of our time.

Professor Eugene Narrett received his BA, MA, and PhD from Columbia University in New York City. His writings on American politics and culture, on western civilization and on Israel have been widely published.

This book discusses the place and role of Israel in history, -- the human story of deeds, thoughts, words and creeds -- and its role in modern times: target, scapegoat, center of hopes and awe and nexus of demonic geopolitics. The book examines diplomacy, politics, terrorism, ‘the war on terror’ and this war’s role in a long conflict about authority, especially, the power “to be as gods…” But it also is, by need and nature a consideration of Western Civilization, it daring, hybrid assemblage, its dynamic and fissionable growth, its deeply engrafted Jew-hatred, and its inevitable self-destruction. That’s right: western civilization will not be destroyed, it has been, is destroying, and will destroy itself. This can be illuminated by reference to Scriptural texts but also simply understood as a law of nature working out its logic: a branch that attacks its root is a branch that will wither and die.

This book examines the roots of western civilization in order to understand the ills that long have been shaking its branches and blossoms. This matter involves every one of us and everyone we know. If our culture is a ship whose building and current captains make its sinking inevitable, it behooves us to perceive and free whatever lifeboats may be at hand.

The discussions of strange, otherwise unfathomable political alliances and pressures, diplomatic initiatives and dicta, economic, strategic, and Intelligence failures of the West become comprehensible when seen in relation to the unvarying pole star of the oligarchies that control western policies: to facilitate, encourage, even to take pride in attrition against the Jewish people until the heartland of Israel is cleansed of Jews and Jewish sovereignty, if it exists, has only nominal value. The ruin of a Jewish Israel appears to be the key piece of the plan of modern western elites to obliterate history and memory, to replace nations with regions, indigenous peoples and states with new-minted entities of consumers with little or no links to meaningful tradition, shared language or religion, few links to anyone but the state. This war against memory, context and thought, against our contingency and humanity proceeds largely through American and Western educational systems and their media. It already is far advanced. The promised pleasures of the self-made self yield more and more to terrors; the mad ambitions of a pagan Greek cosmopolis grow increasingly decadent in its worship of youth, varieties of rapture from rap to forgetting. Civilization cannot survive the loss of history, the habit and honor and practicality of memory that underlies honesty, faith and trust, the loss of its roots, the habit of meaningful discrimination; the institutions, from education to law, habits and vocabulary that exact this loss are the ways in which Western civilization is destroying itself… why?

The essential, culture-forming, life-giving root of Western Civilization is Judaism, Jewish history and the Jewish people. Their gifts to the world include the apprehension of a Creator G-d outside of space and time Who yet gave form and life to a vast multitude of beings from stars to cells; Who gave human beings in particular His grace, compassion, serious attention, the ability and need to choose and be responsible for one’s actions; and the need to recognize that they are not ultimate sovereigns to can re-make the world which must neither be worshipped or rejected but, rather, sanctified. After the transgression in Eden, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel the Eternal One made the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob His people to lead by example. It has been a difficult path.

There always have been enemies: Pharaoh, the implacable enmity of Amalek (Exodus 17, cf. 1 Samuel 15) and Haman (Book of Esther); aggressive empires like Assyria, Babylon and Persia. But within a century of Greek culture’s penetration of the Middle East the attacks became fueled by a basic ideological, theological and social divide that eventually made and deformed western civilization. The attempt to graft Greco-Roman polytheism, nature worship and materialism into Judaism was an audacious and intriguing but essentially unstable tactic that has produced a culture with those same features sometimes softened, often mechanized by concepts of compassion, honesty and providence. Western Civilization’s gravely ambivalent, often murderous relation to its roots is hard-wired. This hatred has been exacting its inevitable costs from the first. Its long-accumulated debt is now being paid in full. Unfortunately and inevitably, as this happens, its leaders return more and more to their culture’s origin, appropriating, viciously misrepresenting and attacking its root: Judaism, the Jewish people in their land.

On a purely historical level this entails myriad denials, omissions, lies and mass murder. On a providential level it involves matters that are many orders of magnitude more grave.

The impetus to this study is what is being done to Israel as the West, with all its many merits, self-destructs. Observing and being caught in the effects of this dynamic as a student and member of western civilization, specifically in America, a unique outpost of the West alluded to tellingly in Scripture, and as a Jew is a fascinating and horrible position. Can it be that “the end of days,” what the diplomats call, “the end of the end game,” is being played out before our eyes, in and with our very lives? Can it really be that our age not only has been but is marked by homicidal slander of Jews spread by mass media? Can it be, as seems to be the case that Western elites, their motives deep in the cults and flawed foundation of the West, intend to challenge Scripture’s road map with their own and to prove that they are gods of the world; to prove the word of the Eternal One to be as malleable as the buying habits of their consumers? It would appear so.

With anti-Jewish client regimes firmly ensconced in Jerusalem, regimes whose major players repeatedly declare their contempt for history, especially that of their own people; with Jews being dragged from their homes and farms by agents of the Global Security State, -- in the name of “Peace”-- it is time to attempt an overview of the origin and cultural history that have brought us to this precipice.

One last prefatory note: if Judaism and what is most vital in Western Civilization teach anything it is human responsibility and the dignity that comes from the ability and need to make informed moral choices, to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the Eternal One and His plan and ethics (Judaism for the Jewish people, the laws of Noah for mankind); to say yes or no to any human authority that makes itself as god. Every moment in history, every great text from Genesis, to Shakespeare to Hawthorne to the overlooked heroes of our day shows that the choices of individuals have great impact on the manner in which history unfolds its origins and destiny. Even as you read these words, regardless what disasters, betrayals, or fraud have been or are being perpetrated on the peoples of the world, there remains, so long as there are human beings, the ability to find the truths of history and to make a positive difference. Every person has a chance to turn to the source of all blessings and align themselves with it. History has shown that the alternatives are terror and violence. Let’s go a better way. Will the world accept, will it honor and enjoy Israel?