Biblical Writ and Christian Zionism: Mike Huckabee, Tucker Carlson and Israel |
It was good of Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, to come clean with the witchery and superstition that marks the Bible. When a text advocating genocide, ethnic cleansing and dubious real estate advice in the name of a vengeful Sky God becomes foreign policy and the sentiment of an office holder, foreheads should crease with worry. But Huckabee has no concerns on conceding, as he did to conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson in a podcast interview, that Israel has an ancient, unsubstantiated right drawn from the heavens to claim good chunks of the Middle East.
In the interview, the niggling Carlson asked Huckabee whether Israel had a right to the land between the River Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates in Syria and Iraq, an area in the Biblical sense that was “essentially the entire Middle East”. The response: “it would be fine if it took it all”, though added that he did not believe Israel was intending to do so. Such a stretch of territory “would be a big piece of land”, though he did not think “that’s what we’re talking about here today.” The Israelis were merely “asking to at least take the land that they now occupy” for reasons of protection and security.
In another comment, Huckabee remarked that, “They’re not asking to go back to take all of that, but they are asking to at least take the land that they now occupy, they now live in, they now own legitimately, and it is a safe haven for them.” Some reflection then set in for the ambassador: his earlier remark about Israel seizing the entire territory had been “somewhat of a hyperbolic statement”.
READ: Washington says Huckabee remarks on Israel and the Middle East were taken out of context
The former Governor of Arkansas and Baptist minister has never been shy about support for Israel and its territorial ambitions. In 2017, he baldly stated that, “There was no such thing as a........