Huckabee’s policy toward Israel disqualifies him as president
MSNBC host Chris Matthews recently referred to Mike Huckabee as a lunatic, accusing him of wanting to remove all Palestinians from the West Bank in a policy that would amount to ethnic cleansing of millions of people.
Huckabee, appearing on Laura Ingraham’s radio show, quickly returned the fire.
“Chris, see a doctor,” he urged Matthews. “Do it quickly. You’re out of control. You’re off your meds. You absolutely must get help, and do it today.”
Here’s the interview:
What’s interesting about the interview is that Huckabee doesn’t try to deny the basic charge that Matthews leveled against him; he simply tries to deny that it’s lunacy. He tries to justify it.
In fact, for several years now Huckabee has laid out an undeniably radical point of view on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. For starters, he opposes creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, which contradicts decades of bipartisan American consensus on how to resolve that issue. But that’s not the crazy part.
Huckabee also believes and has stated repeatedly that the Palestinians have no right to any of the land where they have lived for thousands of years. In Huckabee’s mind, Israelis own it all, and in fact have the right to live anywhere in the occupied West Bank they might wish, even on land technically owned by Palestinians.
“The Jewish people have indigenous rights to the land in which they occupy and live and it goes back not 60 years or 80 years but it goes back 3,500 years,” Huckabee said on one trip to Israel, making it clear that he was referring not just to the state of Israel but all of the conquered territory on the West Bank as well, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.
Huckabee also has strongly opposed any international or American effort to halt the growth of Jewish settlements in the region, again because in his mind the West Bank is as much a part of Israel as Arkansas is a part of the United States.
“To tell Jewish people, ‘You cannot live here, you cannot raise your children here,’ this is the true racism, this is apartheid,” Huckabee said. “I cannot imagine as an American being told that I could not live in certain places in America because I was Christian, or because I was white, or because I spoke English.”
But he is perfectly willing to say such things to Palestinians.
Theoretically, Huckabee says, he’s fine with a Palestinian state. It just can’t be in Palestine. “There are vast amounts of territory that are in the hands of Muslims, in the hands of Arabs,” he says, suggesting that the Palestinian state — and thus the Palestinian people — be moved elsewhere.
“The question is should the Palestinians have a place to call their own? Yes, I have no problem with that,” he said in a 2009 trip to Israel. “Should it be in the middle of the Jewish homeland? That’s what I think has to be honestly assessed as virtually unrealistic.”
In the end, I don’t think Matthews was far off in his assessment of Huckabee’s position. The former Baptist preacher clearly believes that the Palestinians have no right to live where they have lived for centuries because the land was promised to Israel by God more than 3,500 years ago. He has said repeatedly — and implies it again in the Ingraham interview — that you can’t have two groups of people “living on top of each other” in that region, and that a Palestinian state has to be created outside of Palestine.
Ethnic cleansing of Arabs would seem to be the only means to achieve the goals that Huckabee sets out.
I understand that for Huckabee, this is essentially a deeply held religious belief. On religious grounds alone, I can respect that. However, I do not think it possible to elect a person with such beliefs to the presidency of the United States, where he would have the power to implement such a deeply inhumane and disastrous policy.
– Jay Bookman
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218 comments Add your comment
Sixth Sense
March 2nd, 2011
1:48 pm
There’s something about Mike that just throws off a bad vibe. He seems like the kinda guy who would petition the State Senate to stop local voters from deciding whether to allow Sunday alcohol sales. Better for him to stay @ FOX where he can entertain his gomer subset of Republican viewers.
WOODSTOCK MIKE
March 2nd, 2011
2:03 pm
As we can all see from Jay’s last post, he realizes himself that his comments were quite a stretch from anything Huckabee said.
Jay came up with ethnic cleansing on his own.
Huckabee claiming that the Palestinians should be moved is not the same as them being killed.
Classic case of poor journalism and the sad think is that many left wing readers will take this article and truly believe the Huckabee wants to kill Palestinians.
ek
March 2nd, 2011
2:05 pm
A couple remarks:
“where they have lived for thousands of years” – Arabs (and so called palestinians are Arabs) are there since Muhammad’s conquest, not for ” thousands of years”, i.e. occupiers.
” Israelis own it all” – absolutely correct statement, not “In Huckabee’s mind”, since 1. Arabs rejected UN resolution giving them this territory, 2. Israel aquired this territory in defensive war against Arabs aggression – the same way as Poland aquired its western part, or Russia its. We have many other examples in recent history, and I’d like to hear Jay’s opinion about them – for example, ethnic cleaning of Germans (10 mln of them) from many territories in Europe after WWII.
Israel doesn’t occupy any territory, since it didn’t belong to any state (should we count occupation of West Bank by Jordan or Gaza by Egypt rightful ownership?)
Jack
March 2nd, 2011
2:30 pm
Oh, some facts need to be gotten straight here. Especially the one about Palestinians “living on that land for thousands of years.” How could they, if there’s NEVER been a sovereign state of Palestine there? The Jews having been living for thousands of years on that land – unbroken residence for 3000 years.
Jay
March 2nd, 2011
2:47 pm
Woodstock, I would appreciate it if you would not try to put words into my mouth. I do not in any way back away from my stated conclusion. The forcible expulsion of Palestinians — the very definition of ethnic cleansing — from the West Bank is the only conceivable means by which Huckabee’s clearly stated goals can be accomplished.
If I’m wrong, then step up to the challenge I’ve given others here: Tell me what other means might be used to separate the Jews from Palestinians, to ensure that Jews can live wherever they wish on the West Bank, and to set up a Palestinian state outside Palestine.
md
March 2nd, 2011
4:30 pm
“md–so exactly what is it you hate/envy about the Jewish people. G-d knows they’ve have contributed more good to this world than those who would drive them into the sea.”
huh??
I think you may want to do a bit of re-reading………….
md
March 2nd, 2011
4:35 pm
“Tell me what other means might be used to separate the Jews from Palestinians, to ensure that Jews can live wherever they wish on the West Bank, and to set up a Palestinian state outside Palestine.”
And why exactly could those that want to stay not stay?? Palestinians currently live within Israel, what makes you think they couldn’t do it in the West bank too?
As for the State of Palestine, I’ll ask my question again……of all the States involved, why is it only Israel being asked to “donate” land??
md
March 2nd, 2011
4:42 pm
“The forcible expulsion of Palestinians — the very definition of ethnic cleansing ”
And for the sake of clarity, those first 5 words are the ones you should have used. I thought the new idea was to create an aura of civility, and although you are correct in the definition of ethnic cleansing, many interpret it as more like this:
“The term ethnic cleansing, a literal translation of the Serbo-Croatian phrase etnicko ciscenje, was widely employed in the 1990s (though the term first appeared earlier) to describe the brutal treatment of various civilian groups in the conflicts that erupted upon the disintegration of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”
When the term is used frequently in today’s media as a replacement for genocide, it is easy for the masses to read it as such.
Lil' Barry Bailout
March 2nd, 2011
5:30 pm
Huckabee’s policy toward Israel disqualifies him as president
8:26 am March 2, 2011, by Jay
———————–
Yesterday you claim that we’re not allowed to verify a candidate’s constitutionally specified qualifications for President, and today you’re singlehandedly disqualifying people based on your own policy preferences?
To paraphrase and old saying, hypocrites need good memories.
Finn McCool (Yes, Reps won, they now control a whopping 1/2 of 1/3 of the legislative body.) (Golf Clap.)
March 2nd, 2011
8:21 pm
Like Carl Pilkington says: “There’s never a happy story about Israel, is there?”
Lil' Barry Bailout
March 2nd, 2011
8:24 pm
The happy story about Israel is that they still exist despite the best efforts of Islamofascists, Democrats, and anti-Semitic eurotrash.
Adam
March 2nd, 2011
10:12 pm
LBB: You are completely nuts, and your last post adds to that. Democrats do not belong in your latest list of people.
Testing the Limits of Charm | Just Above Sunset
March 3rd, 2011
3:11 am
[...] Democrats can’t help but sort of like, but this is edgy stuff. Kornacki hold that calling for ethnic cleansing in the Middle East and talk about the scary Mau Mau guys is not that [...]
buck@gon
March 3rd, 2011
9:59 am
Jay,
I once heared on NPR an interview with Bill O’Reilly, who I don’t otherwise watch or care for. The interview however, was ridiculous, a liberal hatchet job as O’Reilly said. It ran on the program Fresh Air with the dopy dounding Terry Gross. Many questions I heard were such as this, “a lot of your critics say that you are _______.” Of course, after a few of these thinly veiled attacks on his person, O’Reilly became disgusted and walked out. This was many years ago.
“What’s interesting about the interview is that Huckabee doesn’t try to deny the basic charge that Matthews leveled against him; he simply tries to deny that it’s lunacy. He tries to justify it.”
That’s because charge is FAR MORE RIDICULOUS than the charge that Obama was born in Kenya, which in your tiny liberal oasis isn’t even worthy of justifiying. So, you, Jay Bookman have the moral and rhetorical authority to self-righteously claim that Huckabee somehow needs to argue the (what is it, “fact”, “charge”?) point that his policy is not insane? Would you, Jay Bookman care to elaborate on the lunacy of Huckabee’s idea? Are YOU asking Huckabee to do something that YOU YOURSELF can not or refuse to do?
If you try, won’t it become apparent that a policy of sympathy for this idea is equivalent to symapthy for Palestinians who want to ethically cleanse Jews from the mideast? Yes, you damn-well know it, and so your rhetorical and pschological defense mechanism is to talk past the argument by pretending to be outraged.
Sorry, but when equal effort is made by this stupid paper and you, Washington-Man-Jay, to report the news in a way that is not completely and utterly and extremely biased towards the left and totally HOSTILE to the right, maybe your sense of moral outrage will ring a bell with anyone who thinks during their waking hours. Until then, you need to start by leaving your pretentious outrage at the door, by winning arguments NOT IGNORING THEM!
Adam
March 3rd, 2011
2:10 pm
buck: you need to start by leaving your pretentious outrage at the door, by winning arguments NOT IGNORING THEM!
I agree.
You go first.
MountainMan
March 3rd, 2011
8:25 pm
The best thing for Isreal is to get them out of the region. I think we should carve out a spot in southern Arizona and New Mexico along the border for Isreal to be relocated. This will solve two problems, Isreal being attacked and our border issues. Do you think Isreal would let Mexicans in their new country like we do?. That should plug a big hole in the border.
Adam
March 5th, 2011
9:38 am
MountainMan: You miss the entire point of Israel in that location if you think we can just relocate them
Mr. Right
March 5th, 2011
12:09 pm
Jay I think it would be wise to let the people decide who is qualified for president, not some lib hack like you!! Thank very much!