Huckabee A Red Tory

The real conservative, Canadian style, in the Republican Presidential race is Mike Huckabee. He is actually a Red Tory, and has potential to come from behind and be the American 'Everyman' the Republicans say they want to lead them.

He is folksy being called Mike not Michael, and not afraid to lay down some mean riffs. The common man of the party of Abraham Lincoln, not Reagan. And heck he is from Arkansas so even Clinton gives him the thumbs up him, Bill, not Hillary.

It also appears that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee did receive a bounce from his second place finish in Ames. After garnering only 4 percent in the May poll, Huckabee scored 12 percent support in the latest survey, putting him in a race for third place with Giuliani.

Yesterday in the CNBC/MSNBC debate he said something that most pundits missed, while most of the other candidates promoted 'Free Trade' he called for 'Fair Trade'. It passed over all their heads, without a response from them or the pundit questioners.

Fair trade has been actively discussed by exactly two of the GOP Presidential candidates: Huckabee and Hunter*. The other candidates have expressed only free-trade sentiment, with varying degrees of clarity and stridency. Could this issue also be a part of Huck's climb in the polls? Perhaps.

It didn't even come up on Kudlow's show after the debate interview with him. Though Huckabee got support from an unlikely source Kudlow's guest Democrat Robert Reich.

Aside from a few exceptions last night, there really wasn’t much beef.

Sam Brownback did propose an optional flat tax. And Gov. Huckabee is staying with his fair tax/national sales tax. But none of the big four are touting these ideas.

You see Huckabee supports a Fair Tax and Fair Trade, not Free Trade.

• I believe in free trade, but it has to be fair trade.
• Globalization, done right, done fairly, can be the equivalent of a big pay raise by allowing us to buy things more cheaply.

His fair tax is a consumption tax, all other taxes would be eliminated. Thus leveling the playing field for workers with the rich. A plan similar to one I have discussed here. Reich supports Huckabee's Fair Tax idea as well.

Kudlow took him to task over unions as did right wing bloggers. Though Huckabee was not alone, it appeared last night like all the candidates had suddenly discovered Sam Gompers was a libertarian. They were in Michigan, union country on the eve of a pending strike at Chrysler.

Huckabee predicted unions would gain strength in the coming years because of the growing disparity between executive pay and the working class. When people have their pay dramatically cut, they will turn to unions, he said. “That’s when unions are going to come back in roaring form,” Huckabee said.

Later when questioned about this by Kudlow, Huckabee hit back with the line that if the Republicans and CEO's continue to enjoy the spoils of the capitalist boom without sharing it with the rest of America then they will face the largest unionization drive ever. Wow. From a Republican yet.

Huckabee said that ‘unions will become more powerful’ because of wage deflation. Huckabee also promoted the ‘Fair Tax’ because it ‘untaxes productivity’ and ‘levels the playing field” he emphasized that the “The Fair Tax lifts everybody.”

The Fair Tax is a 23% consumption tax proposed to replace the income tax. Huckabee said it would ‘end the underground economy”.


The real problem, Huckabee said, is that American companies have to pay more in taxes on their products than their foreign competitors. That’s why people in the U.S. and Michigan are losing jobs, he said. “This party is going to have to start addressing it or we’re going to get our britches beat next year,” Huckabee said.

Of course he redeemed himself as a Republican by saying he would not tax CEO salary increases, but instead eliminate taxes, especially payroll taxes on the working class. Failure to share the wealth he said, sounding like John Edwards, will lead to further working class unrest and assure the success of unions.

Here’s what the Machinists say:

“Mike Huckabee was the only Republican candidate with the guts to meet with our members and the only one willing to figure out where and how we might work together,” said Buffenbarger. “He is entitled to serious consideration from our members voting in the upcoming Republican primaries.”

Mike Huckbee’s campaign fills out a little what they talked about:

Huckabee spoke before over 700 members of the IAM in Orlando, Florida on Monday about jobs, globalization, health care, and other 21st century domestic issues.

What does that mean? Specifically, on trade, or "fair trade" as Huckabee calls it:

Huckabee also said he believes in fair trade. “Free trade has to be fair trade. We are losing jobs because of an unlevel, unfair trading arena that has to be fixed. Behind the statistics, there are real families, real lives, and real pain. I’m running for President because I don’t want people who have worked loyally for a company for 20 or 30 years to walk in one morning and be handed a pink slip and be told, ‘I’m sorry, but everything you spent your life working for is no longer here.’"

And while Fred Thompson did get chuckles for his zingers last night, given the softballs tossed at him by the Hardball crowd, Huckabee was no slouch in the off the cuff humour department.

Funniest Man: Once again, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was the most fluid and humorous communicator. He worked in references to the "Jetsons," the "Flintstones," Gomer Pyle and Goober -- excellent stuff for Baby Boom voters.
HUCKABEE – He really is an enjoyable presence up there, a very able politician. If Fred’s not the nominee, Huckabee may have earned himself a spot on the ticket.

Wouldn't the American presidential race be interesting if it was a showdown between a Republican and Democrat from Arkansas.

So far of all the candidates who stand a chance of coming from behind, to take on the four front runners it appears that Huckabee stands the best chance. And as a conservative Christian, he can appeal to the evangelical right as well as to the social progressive compassionate Christians at Sojourners. He is not only pro life, unlike Romney, Giuliani and Thompson, but he is Anti-Poverty. Which is unusual for a Republican.

Huckabee says one of his priorities is to address poverty because it's "consistent with me being pro-life." He calls his desire to fight poverty a "faith position" rather than a political position. He says that it is impossible to address poverty without prioritizing stable homes and families, which he sees as "critical economic issues."

Huckabee is the only Republican politician with substance amongst the leading contenders in this race. The others are hacks.

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A Christian Zionist will be US new ambassador to Israel

(RNS) — Mike Huckabee’s theology about the end times may be unclear, but his views on today’s Israel aren’t.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee takes questions from the media, prior to laying a brick at a new housing complex in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, Aug. 1, 2018. President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Huckabee as ambassador to Israel. Trump said Tuesday that Huckabee is a staunch defender of Israel and his intended nomination comes as Trump has promised to align U.S. foreign policy more closely with Israel’s interests as it wages wars against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)

Mark Silk
November 13, 2024
(RNS) — You’ve got to hand it to President-elect Donald Trump.

After cuddling up to Muslims and winning more of their votes than his Democratic rival a week ago, he’s thrown them under the bus with an alacrity remarkable even for him. In a dream come true for Israel’s annexationist right wing, he announced Tuesday (Nov. 12) that his ambassador to Israel will be former Arkansas Gov. and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee.

From the Israeli right: “He’s a great friend to Israel,” said Yishai Fleisher, spokesperson for the Jewish Community of Hebron, on the West Bank. “We’re thrilled to have him.”

From America’s Arab American community: crickets.

It should surprise no one that Trump would send a pro-Israel evangelical Christian to the Jewish state. At the ceremony marking the opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem in 2018, the clergy speakers comprised one American rabbi and two prominent evangelical ministers: the Rev. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, and the Rev. John Hagee, pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and founder of Christians United for Israel.

Huckabee has connections to this crowd. He made an appearance at Hagee’s church in December 2007, when Huckabee was seeking the Republican presidential nomination. That year, Hagee was dealing with the controversy he had stirred up in the evangelical world with “In Defense of Israel,” a book that rejected what’s known as supersessionism, the idea that “Israel has been rejected and replaced by the church to carry out the work once entrusted to Israel,” as Hagee explained in the book.

But Hagee called this notion that “the Jewish people have ceased to be God’s people, and the church is now spiritual Israel” a “misconception … rooted in the theological anti-Semitism that began in the first century.” It was time, he wrote, “for Christians everywhere to recognize that the nation of Israel will never convert to Christianity.”

So much, evidently, for the widespread evangelical belief that come the end times, Jews will return to Israel and many will convert and be saved.


Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee prays for political leaders at an American Renewal Project pastor luncheon in Henderson, N.C., Sept. 24, 2024. (RNS photo/Yonat Shimron)

What Huckabee himself believes about Judaism is not so easy to determine. Reporters covering his impressive 2008 presidential run — which included a victory in the Iowa caucuses — were able to come up with a tape of just one of the innumerable sermons he recorded during his 12 years as a Baptist pastor. In a 2010 New Yorker piece, he hedged on the question of end times Jewish conversion.

In 2008, he did say that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian” and that the notion of a Palestinian state is used as a “political tool to try and force land away from Israel.” Visiting the West Bank seven years ago, he said, “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria,” adding that “there’s no such thing as an occupation.”

He’s long been an advocate of a one-state solution (i.e., Israel) and, according to the AP, he recently said, “the title deed was given by God to Abraham and to his heirs.” That would be a reference to the 12th chapter of Genesis, where God says to Abraham, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.” Huckabee calls himself a Zionist.

“President-elect Trump has made an inspiring choice,” Hagee said in a statement from CUFI after Huckabee’s appointment was announced.

Speaking on Israeli Army Radio on Wednesday, Huckabee was asked whether Israeli annexation of the West Bank would be a possibility after Trump takes office in January. “Well, of course,” he answered. “I won’t make the policy, I will carry out the policy of the president.”

That policy is best characterized as Christian Zionist.

In Mike Huckabee, Israel will have a longtime friend and true believer as ambassador

(RNS)—The former Arkansas governor and pastor-turned-Fox News host has been a supporter of Israel since his first visit in the 1970s. He sees the growth of Israel as a sign that biblical prophecies are true.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee takes questions from the media, prior to laying a brick at a new housing complex in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, Aug. 1, 2018. President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Huckabee as ambassador to Israel. Trump said Tuesday that Huckabee is a staunch defender of Israel and his intended nomination comes as Trump has promised to align U.S. foreign policy more closely with Israel’s interests as it wages wars against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)

Bob Smietana, Yonat Shimron, and Jack Jenkins
November 14, 2024

(RNS) — Mike Huckabee’s journey to becoming the U.S. ambassador to Israel began 50 years ago.

The former Arkansas governor, presidential candidate and Fox News host first visited Israel with a friend on a tour of the Middle East not long after graduating from high school. “This is a place I’d never been, but I felt at home,” Huckabee said in a podcast interview at the National Religious Broadcasters convention earlier this year, about his experience as a teen.

“I felt an overwhelming spiritual reality of understanding this is the land that God has given to the Jews,” he told Paul Lanier, board chair of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, for the “Nourish Your Biblical Roots” podcast.

Huckabee said he began hosting his own tours of Israel in the 1980s and has visited the country more than 100 times. He’s a longtime supporter of pro-Israel groups like IFCJ — a nonprofit that seeks to strengthen ties between Christians and Jews and does humanitarian work in Israel — and has helped raise money for the group.

Huckabee has also long articulated staunchly pro-Israel political views. As a candidate for president in 2008, Huckabee said he believed there is “no such thing as a Palestinian,” according to CNN. He argued that the very concept of Palestinian identity is “a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”

When he ran for president again in 2015, he held a fundraiser in one of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.

In his conversation with Lanier, Huckabee compared the origin of Israel to the founding of the United States, saying both were started by people who moved to a new land to find peace and security. He also said the growth of Israel since 1948 is like biblical prophecies come true.

“I’ve seen Scripture come to life,” he said. “The desert has bloomed before my eyes.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Huckabee may be the first political appointee — as opposed to interim career foreign service officers — to come to the U.S. Embassy in Israel from a group known as Christian Zionists, who back Israel for theological as well as geopolitical reasons. (The current U.S. ambassador is Jack Lew, an American Jew who served as secretary of the Treasury under Barack Obama.)



Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump talks with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee during a roundtable at the Drexelbrook Catering & Event Center, Oct. 29, 2024, in Drexel Hill, Pa. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Many Christian Zionists are millenarianists — they view the creation of the modern state of Israel as a necessary precondition for the second coming of Jesus and the apocalyptic purification of the world in the end times. Israel, along with the occupied territories it captured in 1967, is considered given by God to the biblical patriarch Abraham, who is told in the Book of Genesis, “God will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”

Huckabee’s own biblical approach to Israel shows up in his habit of referring to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” — a way of signaling a belief that the land has always belonged to the Jewish people.

That divine patrimony, believers say, should shape how nations, including the United States, treat Israel and how individual Christians should view the nation. Over the past 30 years, evangelicals, including Southern Baptists like Huckabee, but also growing groups of charismatic nondenominational Christians, have duly formed strong alliances with Israeli leaders and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular.

They give more to Israeli causes than Jewish Americans do and have formed strong support groups. With 5 million members, Christians United for Israel, led by San Antonio pastor John Hagee, is thought to be the largest pro-Israel nonprofit in the United States. In 2017, when then-President Donald Trump moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the move was applauded by Christian Zionist supporters, and Hagee spoke at the dedication of the new embassy.

RELATED: What evangelicals say they want from a second Trump term

Mordechai Inbari, a professor of religion at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, said Huckabee’s appointment as U.S. ambassador to Israel would be greeted “with open arms” by the Netanyahu government. “Huckabee belongs to the network of supporters of Netanyahu and his government among evangelicals and is considered to be a strong supporter of Israel,” said Inbari.

Huckabee was pressed by Israeli radio Wednesday (Nov. 13) on whether he believed the Trump administration would support annexation by Israel of the occupied territories, principally the West Bank, but also Gaza. He demurred but made it clear that he sees his job as following the decisions made by the president.

“There’s never been an American president,” he added, “that has been more helpful in securing an understanding of the sovereignty of Israel — from the moving of the embassy, recognition of the Golan Heights, and Jerusalem as the capital, no one has done more than president Trump and I fully expect that will continue,” Huckabee said.

Inbari, for one, didn’t think the new Trump administration would rush to see Israel annex the territories. Trump has shown a desire to expand the Mideast peace deal known as the Abraham Accords, inked in his first administration, to include Saudi Arabia. The accords, signed in 2020, normalized Israeli relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and later Sudan and Morocco.

Israel and Saudi Arabia appeared close to a deal in 2023, but the negotiations were derailed by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. Saudi Arabia now insists it will only normalize ties with Israel if there is a pathway for a Palestinian state, which the Israeli government currently rejects.

“I think Trump would want peace with Saudi Arabia rather than Israel annexing the West Bank,” said Inbari. “And so I don’t think that this is something that’s going to happen.”

Yael Eckstein, president of the IFCJ, who traveled to Israel with Huckabee earlier this year to deliver humanitarian aid there, said the former governor has the best interests of the United States and Israel at heart and she views his new role as ambassador as a good thing.

“I think it’s wonderful news, not just for Israel, but for America and the entire world,” she said. “Because I think the stronger Israel and America are in their bond and relationship, the stronger the entire world is.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee prays for political leaders at an American Renewal Project pastor luncheon in Henderson, N.C., Sept. 24, 2024. (RNS photo/Yonat Shimron)

Luke Moon, executive director of the Philos Project, a pro-Israel group, likewise called Huckabee a good choice. Moon cited Huckabee’s past support for Israel and the fact that as an evangelical, he’s not involved in the internal politics of the American Jewish community.

Moon also said that the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the war in Gaza — and the campus protests in the U.S. against that war — likely played a role in the 2024 election.

Whether people were voting for Israel or they were opposed to pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses, said Moon, “either way I’ll take it.”

Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said he was encouraged that Huckabee was one of the first ambassadors to be named by Trump.

“That shows that Israel is top of mind for President-elect Trump,” he said. “I think that is a good thing.”

Mike Huckabee’s Faith-Based Diplomacy

Charles Pierson

 August 29, 2025

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Ireland is considering legislation, the Occupied Territories Bill (“OTB”), which would ban the import of goods from Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. CNN notes that “If passed, the Irish bill would make Ireland the first EU member state to prohibit the import of goods produced in Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.”

Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, was not going to take this affront lying down. On July 15, Huckabee took to X, formerly Twitter, with some undiplomatic words for the Irish:

Heaven’s Ambassador

President Donald Trump selected Huckabee to be US ambassador to Israel shortly after his re-election. The 70-year-old Huckabee has worn many hats during his long career: among them, governor of Arkansas, talk show host, and failed Republican presidential aspirant.

Huckabee is also an ordained Southern Baptist preacher. In a sense, Huckabee has never left the pulpit. Huckabee’s diplomacy rests on a fundamentalist reading of the Bible. This explains Huckabee’s unstinting support for the State of Israel.

On the December 6, 2024 “Truth and Liberty Show,” Huckabee declared that God has blessed Israel; it follows that people who protest against Israel “hate God.” Huckabee says that “If one is Satan, his goal is to destroy that which God loves. So that’s why we’re seeing it and to try to explain it any other way will never make sense.”

It is safe to say that Huckabee’s appointment is President Trump’s reward to the staggering 80% of White Evangelicals who gave Trump their votes in 2024. “Huck” describes himself as “an unapologetic, unreformed Zionist”: a Christian Zionist. Christian Zionists—of which there are some 20 to 50 million in the US—believe that God gave the Holy Land to the Jews—and only the Jews.

Christian Zionists are set for the Second Coming of Christ, which they expect any day now. The countdown to Christ’s return began when the state of Israel was created in 1948. Zionists, whether Christian or Jewish, now await the construction of the “Third Temple” on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This cannot happen without Israel’s demolishing the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. Destruction of the Mosque will likely trigger a thermonuclear Armageddon, a prospect Christian Zionists welcome. 

And the Palestinians? The Palestinians have no place in the divine scheme. But don’t worry: according to “Huck,” “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.” (Vladimir Putin says the same thing about Ukrainians.) Huckabee said in 2017 that “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”

Huckabee said in 2015 that if a Palestinian state is created, it should be in a neighboring Muslim nation such as Egypt, Syria, or Jordan. Or France. On July 25 of this year, Huckabee sarcastically added France to the list. That was after French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his country will recognize Palestinian statehood in September. 

It will take a miracle to create a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dead set against Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu says that a Palestinian state would “be a platform to destroy Israel.”

Other highly positioned officials in the Israeli government are just as adamant in their opposition to a Palestinian state. On August 14, Israeli Finance Minister Beelzebub Bezalel Smotrich, announced that within a few months, work would begin on a massive settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank which will consist of roughly 3,400 housing units. The new settlement, designated “E1,” will bisect the West Bank, rendering a contiguous Palestinian state practically impossible. Smotrich says that the new settlement “buries the idea of a Palestinian state” and called E1 “Zionism at its best.” The US has given its tacit assent to the project. 

Helpful Huck says that the new settlement “does not violate international law” (the International Court of Justice disagrees). Ambassador Huckabee has said that the decision whether to build the E1 settlement will be left to Israel.

God, Grits, and Genocide

Huckabee refuses to say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Huckabee tweeted on August 2 that “If Israel is committing a genocide, they’re really bad at it .. just like they’re bad at apartheid.”

Oh, I don’t know, Mike. Israel hasn’t killed or forcibly displaced everyone in Gaza (yet), but it has killed 60,000 so far with no end in sight.

Amnesty International declares that “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.” An August 18 report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification declares for the first time that there is famine in some parts of Gaza, affecting half a million people—about one quarter of Gaza’s population at the end of 2024.

The Israeli government disagrees. In an August 22 post on X, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the IPC report as “an outright lie,” adding that “Israel does not have a policy of starvation. Israel has a policy of preventing starvation.” 

There are several steps that must be taken for there to be a hope of ending the genocide in Gaza. There must be an immediate ceasefire in Gaza; the US must end its weapons shipments to Israel; and Israel must stop blocking humanitarian agencies’ access to Gaza. There must be a return to the UN food distribution system. At present, UN agencies in Gaza have been supplanted by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was created by the US and Israel and is their tool. The GHF operates a mere four food distributions centers; the UN agencies operated 400. 

And, for the love of God, could the US please recall Mike Huckabee?

Charles Pierson is a lawyer and a member of the Pittsburgh Anti-Drone Warfare Coalition. E-mail him at Chapierson@yahoo.com.

Israeli ‘liberal’ opposition leader agrees with Mike Huckabee that the bible gives Israel the right to land from Egypt to Iraq

Mike Huckabee made headlines when he said Israel has a biblical right to land from Iraq to Egypt in an interview with Tucker Carlson. Israel supporters tried to dismiss the idea as nonsense, but Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid says he agrees.

By Jonathan Ofir 

 February 24, 2026 

MONDOWEISS

Yair Lapid attends a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem May 15, 2022. (Photo: Abir Sultan/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo)

Everyone is talking about Tucker Carlson’s interview with U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. It has amassed millions of views, and if there’s one item that caught attention, it was Huckabee’s view that Israel had a biblical right to the land from the Euphrates River in Iraq to the Nile River in Egypt.

Carlson was shocked and pressed him on this:

“What does that mean? Does Israel have the right to that land? Because you’re appealing to Genesis, you’re saying that’s the original deed.”

Huckabee was clear: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

Some were in shock. Israeli hasbarists like Eylon Levy tried to tone it down – responding on X that “literally nobody” with power in Israel believes this and to think so is “a delusional fantasy of the antisemite’s imagination.” To which he added, “Stop spreading mindless conspiratorial bullshit.”

Even Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy opined that Huckabee was an extremist who neither represented the U.S. nor Israel, “he barely represents its crazies,” he wrote. “Huckabee Speaks Boldly in Ways Even Ben-Gvir and Kahane Wouldn’t Dare,” was Levy’s title:


“Not for nothing did Carlson say: This man doesn’t represent my country; he represents Israel. It’s neither of these, Carlson. This man doesn’t represent Israel; he barely represents its crazies. But it’s definitely possible that he represents an America in the making, one whose Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently lauded the West’s “Christian heritage” while in Munich.”

But then, the ‘liberal’ Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid proved both the Levys wrong.

In a press conference Monday for his party Yesh Atid (‘There is a Future’), Lapid answered a question from a religious Kipa News journalist:

“Good afternoon sir. The Ambassador Huckabee said this week, and we know the extent of the American administration on the government here, that he supports Israeli control from the Euphrates to the Nile, this means [control] over Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, do you support it or do you think this should be stopped?”

Lapid’s answered:

“Look, I don’t think I have a dispute on the biblical level [about] what the original borders of Israel are. The Euphrates, the last time I checked, was in Iraq. I don’t think that when the Americans entered Iraq, they experienced great relief. I support anything that will allow the Jews [to have] a big, vast, strong land, and a safe shelter for us, for our children, and for our children’s children. That’s what I support.”

Lapid was challenged on the size:

“How vast?”

“However possible.”

“Until Iraq?”

“The discussion is a security discussion. The fact that we are in our ancestral land… Yesh Atid’s position is as follows: Zionism is based on the bible. Our mandate of the land of Israel is biblical. The biblical borders of Israel are clear. There are also considerations of security, of policy, and of time. We were in exile for 2,000 years… you don’t really want all this lecture, right? At least you were not waiting for it… The answer is: there are practical considerations here. Beyond the practical considerations, I believe that our ownership deed over the land of Israel is the bible, therefore the borders are the biblical borders.”

“Wait, so fundamentally, the great, big land of Israel?”

“Fundamentally, the great, big and vast Israel, as much as possible within the limitations of Israeli security and considerations of Israeli policy”.

So there you have it. The bible is our deed. Like the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, said.

Lapid has stated his principle of “maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians” over ten years ago. Now he is saying that the “maximum land” is just a question of exigency – “practical considerations.”

A ‘liberal’, ‘secular’ Israeli opposition leader, just told us that “Zionism is based on the bible.”

I think we need to believe him. We need to stop talking about Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and Huckabee. It’s Zionism, stupid.

The Shift: International outcry over Huckabee claim that Israel can control from Egypt to Iraq

The Trump administration is in damage control mode after Mike Huckabee claimed Israel has the biblically mandated right to stretch from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq.

By Michael Arria

February 26, 2026 

MONDOWEISS


Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s Participation in Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day 2025 Ceremony, April 24, 2025 (Photo: U.S. Embassy Jerusalem)


The popular conservative pundit Tucker Carlson recently interviewed U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

Carlson pressed the former Arkansas Governor on the country and the U.S. relationship with it, repeatedly leaving Huckabee flummoxed. Huckabee made many perplexing claims, but his most controversial statement came when Carlson asked him whether Israel has a biblical right to the land.

Carlson asked Huckabee, who is a Baptist minister and a Christian Zionist, about a Bible verse in which God promises Abraham that his descendants will receive land “from the wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

Carlson said this basically amounted to the entire Middle East.

“Israel is a land that God gave, through Abraham, to a people that he chose,” responded Huckabee. “It was a people, a place and a purpose.”

Asked whether Israel had a right to it, he responded, “It would be fine if they took it all.”

At the time I am typing this, the Carlson/Huckabee interview has been watched over 3 million times and is already causing something of an international scandal.

The governments of more than a dozen countries, including allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, issued a joint statement condemning Huckabee’s comments and expressing “strong concern,” as his position directly contradicts official U.S. policy on annexation.

“The Ministries reaffirmed that Israel has no sovereignty whatsoever over the Occupied Palestinian Territory or any other occupied Arab lands,” explains the statement. “They reiterated their firm rejection of any attempts to annex the West Bank or separate it from the Gaza Strip, their strong opposition to the expansion of settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and their categorical rejection of any threat to the sovereignty of Arab states.”

“They further warned that the continuation of Israel’s expansionist policies and unlawful measures will only inflame violence and conflict in the region and undermine the prospects for peace and called for an end to these incendiary statements,” it continues. “The Ministries underscored their countries’ steadfast commitment to the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of their independent state along the lines of 4 June 1967, and the end of the occupation of all Arab lands.”

The incident has forced Trump officials, such as Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker, to call Arab leaders and assure them that Huckabee was expressing his personal views and that the administration’s policies have not shifted.

In addition to the international fallout, the interview is reverberating domestically, as it further symbolizes the growing rift over Israel within the Republican Party. A Times of Israel report on the situation refers to the wider fight as “battle for the GOP’s soul.”

The new controversy comes just two weeks after right-wing activist Carrie Prejean Boller was ousted from Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission after criticizing Israel during a hearing.
AIPAC convention

It wasn’t long ago that AIPAC held a massive annual conference that was broadcast on C-SPAN. Thousands gathered to watch presidential hopefuls and influential lawmakers openly pledge their support for Israel.

After its 2020 policy conference, AIPAC put a pause on public meetings over COVID concerns, but they never brought back the annual conference, preferring to embrace smaller meetings and video conferences.

Last weekend was the lobbying group’s annual Congressional Summit, and the event certainly wasn’t broadcast on national television. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find any in-depth reporting on it.

An AIPAC source told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch that the meeting would focus on Iran. In her piece on the event, she notes that the organization has “largely stayed silent” amid its rapidly declining reputation among Democratic lawmakers and candidates.

“The question facing the group heading into the midterm elections is whether growing discontent with AIPAC among the party grassroots and a growing number of rank-and-file Democrats will impact its time-tested strategy of working with both parties’ leadership,” writes Deutch. “But the decision by leading congressional lawmakers to attend the conference reveals that AIPAC’s bipartisan playbook is still effective, even as it shows signs of strain.”

Yes, it’s true that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R‑LA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D‑NY), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries attended the event, but will AIPAC’s overall election strategy prove effective?

Earlier this month, their attacks on centrist Tom Malinowski in New Jersey’s 11th district Democratic primary probably helped Analilia Mejia, the most pro-Palestine candidate in the race, prevail. Now they’re reportedly intervening in the Illinois 9th district, to target Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, a move that could propel Palestine advocate Kat Abughazaleh to victory.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who currently represents that district, just pulled her endorsement of Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller in Illinois’ 2nd district over AIPAC donations.

“Illinois deserves leaders who put voters first, not AIPAC or out-of-state Trump donors,” said Schakowsky. “I cannot support any candidate running for Congress who is funded by these outside interests.”