Biblical Writ And Christian Zionism: Mike Huckabee, Tucker Carlson And Israel – OpEd

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”.

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 West Bank.  It’s Judea and Samaria.  There is no such thing as a settlement.  They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities.”  Following such flawed logic, there could be “no such thing as an occupation.”  In 2018, he got his hands dirty in laying bricks at a new housing complex in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, a town he inexplicably saw as “a bridge to peace” that offered Palestinians job opportunities and better earnings than if they were to work on Palestinian sites.

As a representative of the Christian evangelical movement, Huckabee sees Israel as caretakers of holy land, most notably Jerusalem, before the rapture, when Christ’s second coming will bring the world to its natural, apocalyptic conclusion.  (What Jews do then is unlikely to be a point of theological joy, when the caretakers will be forced to become Christians on pain of eternal damnation.)  The movement’s support has been so significant as to prompt Ron Dermer, former Israeli ambassador to the US and advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to call evangelicals “the backbone of Israel’s support in the United States”.

Huckabee’s comments, while they impressed the pro-annexation Israeli crowd including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, found an impressively wide and indignant audience among Arab and Muslim states.  On February 22, the foreign ministry of the United Arab Emirates released a joint statement with an impressive list of other foreign ministries: Egypt, Jordon, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, the Lebanese Republic, the Syrian Arab Republic, Palestine, the secretariats of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the League of Arab States (LAS), and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).  The parties strongly condemned and expressed “profound concern regarding the statements made by the United States Ambassador to Israel, in which he indicated that it would be acceptable for Israel to exercise control over territories belonging to Arab states, including the occupied West Bank.”

Such “dangerous and inflammatory remarks”, which violated international law and the Charter of the United Nations and constituted a “grave threat to security and stability of the region” were in direct contradiction to “the vision put forward by US President Donald J. Trump, as well as the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict.”  The latter would prevent the situation from escalating and create “a political horizon for a comprehensive settlement that ensures the Palestinian people have their own independent state.”

Traditional objections were reiterated: Israel had no legitimate sovereign claims to the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) or other “occupied Arab lands.”  Attempts to annex the West Bank and sever it from the Gaza Strip and expanding settlement activities in the OPT and threats to the sovereignty of Arab states, were categorically rejected.  Continued expansionist policies by Israel and its “unlawful measures will only inflate violence and conflict in the region and undermine the prospects for peace”.  The ministries duly demanded “an end to these incendiary statements.”

Left flat-footed, the Trump administration made a clumsy effort to put out feelers of reassurance.  Huckabee “doesn’t represent our views and doesn’t represent the best version of the pro-Israel position,” a State Department official told Politico in embarrassed anonymity.  Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker have also reportedly sought to placate concerned States that the ambassador was merely expressing his personal views, rather than signalling a change in policy.

As for Huckabee’s own efforts to address the Carlson exchange, a traditional ad hominem approach was in order.  On social media, the ambassador has been busily sharing and discussing articles and snatches of vituperation accusing Tucker of antisemitism, lunacy and having “a memory problem or an integrity problem”.  The pundit was “making statements instead of asking me questions and letting me respond,” moaned Huckabee in one post.  Carlson, he also stated in an exchange with David Brodie of the evangelical Christian Broadcasting Network, had “routinely” disparaged Trump “with either direct attacks or inferences that his policies are wrong and hurtful to America and that [he] is getting pushed around by foreign governments”.  

To Editor-in-Chief Joel Rosenberg of All Israel News, Huckabee further suggested that Tucker be barred from visiting the White House “because, quite frankly, this is a person who is doing serious, significant damage to President Trump and to the administration.”  Not quite as much damage as Huckabee, let alone Israel’s continued stranglehold over the making of US policy towards the Middle East.