Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!

Watch the Video Here (31 minutes, 58 seconds)

By Glenn Diesen
Substack.com
19 November 2024

I discussed Biden’s decision to strike Russia with long-range missiles with Svitlana Morenets at The Spectator.

My position in this debate was that these missiles were not intended to turn the tide of the war; instead, they seemed to be intended to sabotage Trump’s efforts to end the war. Obama similarly escalated tensions with Russia before he left office by imposing sanctions, closing a Russian consulate, and expelling Russian diplomats to make it more difficult for Trump to “get along with Russia.” Biden’s actions are much more dangerous, as this marks the start of a NATO-Russia War.

Arguing that Ukraine has the right to defend itself is very manipulative, as the main issue is that NATO crosses the line from proxy war to direct war.

• These are American long-range missiles.
• Their use is entirely dependent on US intelligence.
• NATO will target these missiles.
• American soldiers will operate these weapons.
• They will be guided by American satellites.

This is an American attack on Russia, the world’s most significant nuclear power. Putin has warned it will be interpreted as the start of a NATO-Russia War, and he has committed Russia to retaliate.

VIEW | COL. DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: TRUMP AND THE STORM OF THE CENTURY

Judging Freedom with Judge Andrew Napolitano

Watch the Video Here (25 minutes, 26 seconds)

Host: Judge Andrew Napolitano
Judging Freedom
20 November 2024

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive? Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen

Editor’s Note |

400 words

OUR SIXTY DAYS OF NUCLEAR CHICKEN HAVE BEGUN

Expectations of peace talks after Donald Trump's inauguration are pushing all sides of the Ukraine war to escalate, with British and American missiles adding fresh risk.

Karachev, in the Bryansk region

By Matt Taibbi
Substack.com
Nov 19, 2024

In an irony so miserable it must be true, widespread belief that peace talks are coming after Donald Trump’s inauguration is pushing Russia and the U.S. into a game of nuclear chicken, leaving us with “60 days to decide on World War,” as one Russian newspaper put it this week.

While the story may not be getting Cuban Missile Crisis treatment here, Joe Biden’s decision to green-light launches of U.S.-made ATACMS missiles into Russia has that country’s media in freakout mode. Rhetoric was hotter than ever today, the 1000th day of the war after at least six ATACMS were fired into Russian territory.

               “Russia and the West have reached the point of no return,” declared Moskovsky Komsomolets.

               “Halfway to Armageddon,” read a RuNews24 headline.

               “The most dangerous moment of escalation in the history of this war, and maybe the most dangerous moment in European history since 1945,” historian Alexander Friedman told EuroRadio.

               “World War III, closer still?” asked Irina Romaliskaya at the top of the Evening newscast.

               “The last ‘red line,’” grumbled Andrei Krasov, First Secretary of the Duma’s Defense Committee.

A U.S. official told Reuters Russians intercepted two out of eight ATACMS, with the remainder landing near Karachev, a town in the Bryansk region about 110 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. The Russian defense ministry says it shot down five of six missiles. Either way, the move triggered another change of nuclear doctrine by Vladimir Putin, allowing for a nuclear response to any attack on the “territorial wholeness” of Russia. The previous standard required a threat to the “very existence” of the Russian state.

Most Americans likely view the ATACMS strike as just another self-defense response by a Ukrainian army that’s been forced to rely on Western resources and weapons since Russia’s invasion two years ago, and not substantively different from the 34 drones sent to strike Moscow just over a week ago. The Russian government disagrees, but do they disagree enough to nuke someone?

               “Once we start talking about high-altitude, long-range weapons of Western manufacture, it’s a completely different story,” a miffed Putin said in an interview given after news of Biden’s go-ahead but before the Karachev attack. “The Ukrainian army cannot launch such attacks on its own. Only military specialists from NATO countries can.”

Putin explained that Russia's decision now is not whether to allow Ukraine to strike on its territory (that’s already been happening) but whether this launch of American missiles into Russia constitutes “direct participation” in the war by the U.S. and Europe. If the second conclusion is reached, Putin said, it would change the “very nature” of the conflict, putting “various response options” into play.

“TIME TO THINK”: Left, a Russian headline today wondering “if a nuclear war could start.” Right, a Polymarket betting graph showing 12% expectation of atomic combat

A parade of other Russian officials, from Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to former president and Deputy Security Council Chair Dmitri Medvedev, have warned the ATACMS launches mean a “new phase” and possible widening of the war.

Medvedev tweeted that the new doctrine “means NATO missiles fired against our country could be deemed an attack by the bloc on Russia” and “Russia could retaliate with WMD against Kyiv and key NATO facilities… That means World War III.”

The United States is giving a big eye-roll to all this bluster. Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said,

               “We are not at war with Russia,” and “the party here that continues to escalate this war is Russia” by “bringing in another foreign country into the battlefield.”

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Russia’s only aim is to “intimidate both Ukraine and other countries around the world through irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and behavior.”

EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell said,

               “It is not the first time that Putin has played a nuclear gamble.”

But the U.S. and Europe also seem interested in gambling.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer countered the ATACMS news by announcing that the U.K. would be against targets in Russia. “We need to double down,” Starmer insisted. “We need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary because we cannot allow Putin to win this war.” A blinking, expressionless Starmer at the G20 in Rio de Janeiro sounded like an inpatient with a button-pushing fetish. Ask yourself if this inspires confidence:

               Of course, neither side has a realistic belief in “winning” anything after American politics altered the schedule. Russians and Ukrainians expect cease-fire negotiations to begin shortly after Trump is elected. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the war “will end faster” once Trump takes office. “This is their approach, their promise to their society, and it is also essential to them.”

As a result, combatants are all scrambling to grab what they can before any cease-fire.

Yevgeny Kiselov, who was Russia’s most famous anchorman in the nineties but left for Ukraine in 2008 because “there is no open political debate” in Russia, told Ukrainian newsreader Yulia Litvinenko that Putin is “trying to seize as much Ukrainian territory as possible” in advance of Trump’s inauguration, to have “some kind of exchange to present at the negotiating table.”

The Russians have made recent territorial gains in eastern and southeastern Ukraine. According to Zelensky, they came at a high cost (2,000 dead per day, he claims), but Russian media has nonetheless been trumpeting its advances.

Meanwhile, unnamed U.S. officials told Reuters that greenlighting the ATACMS launches was similarly designed to help Ukraine make “gains” and “put Kyiv in a better negotiating position” before Trump shows up and upsets the military apple cart with peace talks.

The United States is gambling that Putin will hesitate to expand hostilities or strike against Europe, knowing he could be able to formalize gains in Ukraine in just a few months. It may be a good bet, but Earth is a hell of a thing to gamble. As Dmitry Popov in Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote yesterday:

                Will the collective West resort to severe blows to Russia so that Ukraine’s position will strengthen not in words but in reality?

               Will Putin restrain himself in this case (according to the doctrine, the decision to use nuclear weapons is made by the president)?

               These are the two main questions for the next 60 days.

With Russian media howling about NATO, the Russian-speaking Internet full of scary videos (see below) about which cities are in ATACMS range, and Kremlin and Duma officials rattling sabers at the West, the political pressure on Putin to strike back will grow with every American or British missile that lands on Russian soil. The smart money says he won’t, but if Putin were predictable, the war wouldn’t have started in the first place.

Unless Biden and Starmer are trying to start a war, this “double down” seems like insanity: There is nothing to lose but two months of flexibility to gain.

If everyone believes peace talks are months away, why not start them now? It makes too much sense. God save us from armchair generals and some real ones, too.

PBS NEWS HOUR | WHY DO AMERICAN EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS HAVE DEEP TIES TO SUPPORTING ISRAEL

Watch the Video Here (6 minutes, 47 seconds)

Host: William Brangham
Guest: Historian Daniel Hummel
PBS News Hour
17 November 2024

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has long been strongly pro-Israel, a stance deeply rooted in his evangelical Christian faith. Now, as Trump’s pick to serve as ambassador to Israel, he could be integral to shaping U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. William Brangham speaks with historian Daniel Hummel about the connection between evangelicals and their support for Israel.

NO, THE BIBLE DOESN’T COMMAND WE “STAND WITH ISRAEL”

I am often told that I am “not a Christian” because I dare criticize the state of Israel’s behavior as if blind support of a modern nation-state were an obligation of being a True Christian™.

By Benjamin L. Corey
Patheos
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/no-bible-doesnt-command-stand-israel/

27 February 2017

When reporting or lamenting over the gross human rights violations and genocide by the modern state of Israel against the Palestinian people, many Christians immediately freak the heck out.

I am often told that I am “not a Christian” because I dare criticize the state of Israel’s behavior as if blind support of a modern nation-state were an obligation of being a True Christian™.

Upon being stripped of my membership card in Christianity, many of these “internet Bible scholars” quickly reminded me that God commands us to stand with Israel! But is that even true? I mean, for those of us who grow up in Evangelical Fundamentalism, we’re taught that from day one, but just because our childhood pastor taught us this and Grandma believed it doesn’t make it accurate.

I’ve long written on this topic both from a theological and geopolitical standpoint, but I wanted to quickly and concisely lay out a few points in response to the whole “you’re not a true Christian if you don’t stand with Israel” nonsense.

As your Bible Explainer in Chief, let me quickly break it down for you– because no, the Bible doesn’t command we stand with Israel.

1. The entire “stand with Israel” theology is based on one verse, which has nothing to do with any modern nation-state born a few thousand years later.

Preachers will claim God commands us to stand with Israel to be blessed, but the Bible does not say that. In Genesis 12:3, God reportedly told Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” This was a promise to Abraham—neither biblical Israel nor modern Israel existed when it was written. It was a promise to Abraham as part of God’s covenant with him.

2. The Bible teaches that the true descendants of Abraham are spiritual, not ethnic.

The same preachers say, “Yes! It was a promise to Abraham that extends to his descendants—Israel.” But that’s not the whole story, either. The Bible teaches that “not all that descended from Israel belong to Israel” (Romans 9:6) and that a true descendant of Abraham is not ethnic but a matter of the heart (Romans 2:29).

The Bible does not refer to Israel as a nation-state. In the New Testament, Israel comprises all who accept Jesus as their King.

3. Not even the prophets in the Bible blindly stood with Israel– including Jesus.

The biblical prophets are the last people who would seem “pro-Israel” because they were constantly rebuking Israel for bad behavior. And they didn’t hold back forceful language, either– some wrote that God utterly hated every expression of their religion because they were ignoring justice for the poor and marginalized.

On top of the prophets, remember that Jesus was executed as a traitor and a threat to Israel.

4. The Bible doesn’t command us to support people committing evil acts.

This is a concept we seem to understand in day-to-day life, but all logic goes out the window when it comes to standing with Israel. For example, yes– God wants one to be faithful to their family, but does that mean you stand by and support them if they're going to drive drunk? Do you support them if they want to shoot their neighbor and steal their car? Of course not- that’s nonsense.

Unquestioningly, supporting Israel would be like helping a friend or family member regardless of their behavior, and I see nothing in the Bible or the teachings of Jesus that suggests we are supposed to support those who do evil as they do evil.

Israel is an apartheid state where the Indigenous people are oppressed and victims of untold daily discrimination and violence; it is a state that offers government-subsidized abortions regardless of the reason, a place where Christians have had to petition the government so that they can walk down the street without being spat upon, a place where Christian places of worship are routinely attacked, where Palestinian children are mercilessly oppressed and even slaughtered, and a nation that is consistently rebuked by the international community for human rights violations that would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world.

Any theology that tells you to support all that is garbage, and you can figure it out without even digging deep into the theology. Like they say, you don’t have to stick your head in a trashcan to know that garbage smells.

…

The bottom line: What the world calls Israel is NOT what the Bible calls Israel. The world refers to a nation-state created just a generation ago. The Bible talks about the people of Abraham, spiritual people who have accepted their king, Jesus. Israel is not a people group one is born into but a people group you join by pledging your allegiance to Jesus.

So, is standing with Israel a biblical concept? No. The stronger biblical case would be standing in opposition to Israel’s ungodly behavior.

Dr. Benjamin L. Corey is a public theologian and cultural anthropologist who is a two-time graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with graduate degrees in the fields of Theology and International Culture and holds a doctorate in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is also the author of the new book Unafraid: Moving Beyond Fear-Based Faith, which is available wherever good books are sold. www.Unafraid-book.com.

ISRAELI HISTORIAN PROFESSOR SHLOMO SAND: ‘JEWS AND PALESTINIANS WILL HAVE TO LIVE TOGETHER’

In his new essay, the Israeli historian delves into the ‘eclipsed’ currents of Zionism that dreamt of a binational state as an alternative to Jewish nationalism.

Israeli soldiers on guard near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in November 2023 (AFP)

By Hassina Mechaï
Middle East Eye, Paris
https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/shlomo-sand-jews-and-palestinians-we-have-no-choice-we-will-have-live-together
22 August 2024

Academic Shlomo Sand's latest work, Deux Peuples Pour un Etat? Relire l’histoire du sionisme in French (Two Peoples for One State? Rereading the History of Zionism), was written before 7 October.

"Since 1967, more than 875,000 settlers have occupied the West Bank.

Four current government ministers and a chief of staff even live there.

That undermines any viability of a two-state solution.

'We are de facto in a binational state,' Sand insists.

'We are now so irreversibly intertwined with each other that, deep down,
I tell myself that the occupation that began in 1967 revealed [the state] that could have happened in 1948 [during the Nakba]
If there had not been the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians.'”

However, the professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University told Middle East Eye he would not have “changed a theoretical line” if he had published it after the Hamas-led attack on Israel and the subsequent war on Gaza.

“Perhaps I would have specified that 7 October is a confirmation of my fears,” he clarified in a conversation with Middle East Eye.

“We can only move towards a political organization of the two peoples in a federation or confederation. Otherwise, there will always be more disasters like 7 October and its consequences in Gaza,” he added, further cautioning:

“Before reaching this historic compromise between the two peoples, we will experience other disasters that will make this political solution indispensable.”

In his voluntarist pessimism, the Israeli historian, who claims to be a realist and rejects utopia, remains convinced that Jews and Palestinians are "condemned to live together. Otherwise, they will disappear together."

"I do not think that a Jewish state alone can survive in the Middle East. No more than a Palestinian state, for that matter," he declares.

Having established the need for a binational state, the historian appeals to Zionism—but not just any Zionism.

In his essay, the historian delves into forgotten texts by some early Zionists.

These thinkers thought out a binational state for Jews and Arabs, first within the Ottoman Empire and then Mandatory Palestine, even as the idea of an exclusivist Jewish national home was winning out.

According to Sand, Zionism created a “mythological circle” connecting the dispersal of the Jews mentioned in the Bible to the “return” of the Jewish people to “Eretz Yisrael” (the Land of Israel) in a historical linearity.

While there is this common thread tying Zionists of various kinds together, Sand considers Zionism a pluralist movement.

A Eurocentric ideology

Sand writes that it was the version of Zionism promoted by its founder, Theodor Herzl, and of the leaders of the newly created state of Israel that eventually imposed itself to the exclusion of other forms.

"They are the ones who shaped Israel in a power struggle with the Arab world," he told MEE.

European Orientalism very much influenced this sort of Zionism.

The Zionists of Herzl and Vladimir Jabontinsky, the chief ideologue of the Zionist right, won the ideological battle in Israel.

‘We can only move towards a political organization of the two peoples in a federation or confederation. Otherwise, there will always be more disasters like 7 October and its consequences in Gaza.’
- Shlomo Sand

It was an ideology deeply rooted in a European vision of the nation-state, one which had a racial dimension, required a demographic majority, and was permeated by European colonialism and orientalist thinking.

Herzl considered the future Jewish state a western outpost in Ottoman Palestine.

Jabotinsky denied the natives of Palestine any possibility of agreeing to a Jewish presence and instead promoted the use of force to impose the Zionist idea.

Their ideas filtered down to Israel's founders.

Its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, for example, was obsessed with securing a Jewish majority for the young Israeli state.

All three shaped thinking in modern Israel.

Israel's founder asserted a fierce refusal to establish a political structure based on the democratic principle of "one person, one vote" that would risk hindering Jewish colonization.

Sand’s book also shows how persistent Christian antisemitism very much influenced Zionism.

The historian writes that the idea of "natural" ownership of Palestine had been favorably welcome in the Christian Western world, in particular, because it implied the promise of a decrease in the number of Jews in Europe.

The forgotten fathers of another Zionism

While working on his book, Sand said he was surprised to discover other currents of Zionism that called for a binational state.

“They rejected the idea of an exclusive Jewish state because they knew Ottoman or Mandatory Palestine, having lived there.”

These proponents of a binational state were both idealistic and pragmatic, he told MEE.

The book is peppered with names like Ahad Haam (the pen name of author Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, meaning "one of the people"), Bertrand Lazare, Gershom Scholem, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Avraham B Yehoshua, and Uri Avnery.

Essayists, Jewish scholars, writers, and philosophers put forward a vision of a binational state.

Most of them are known in Israel as the proponents of so-called "spiritual" Zionism, deeply influenced by Jewish ethics and religion. A large number of these "spiritual" Zionists were religious, unlike the atheists Herzl, Jabotinsky, or Ben Gurion.

The philosopher Martin Buber (pictured), Judah Leon Magnes, and Albert Einstein all envisioned a state for two nations with equal rights (AFP)

Their writings on the binational state have yet to be discovered, Sand told MEE.

“Their theories devoted to the Arab natives have been eclipsed, and only those where they linked Zionism to the religious texts of Judaism were preserved.”

For these other Zionist thinkers, attached to the idea of a binational state, Mandatory Palestine was a Semitic place and not a Western outpost in the Orient.

These thinkers had observed a populated land, contrary to Herzl’s slogan, “A land without a people for a people without a land.”

They felt profoundly Semitic and saw in the “return” to Palestine a way to rediscover their lost orientality.

“Surprisingly, these thinkers who campaigned for a binational state also saw the Jewish people as a race. And that is precisely why they thought that one could get closer to the Arabs, because they were the same Semitic race,” Sand explained to MEE.

“For them, the Jewish people were Semitic and had to live with the Arabs, in the hope of a Semitic race that would once again be unified.”

These “Semitic” pacifists found many points of convergence, both spiritual and biological, with the Orient and the Arabs, Sand notes in his book.

Unlike Herzl, for example, some of them were quick to reject the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed the creation of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Ottoman Palestine, seeing it as a show of imperialist force.

For some of these figures, the residents of Palestine even represented the descendants of the Judeans who were Islamised after the Arab conquests.

Sand devotes meticulous and detailed pages of his book to these thinkers of Semitic nationalism.

He mentions Haam, who joined the Zionist movement in the 1880s and traveled to Ottoman Palestine, where he lived and learned Arabic.

‘I can see clearly that the Israeli state, as it defines itself as a Jewish state, will not survive.’
- Shlomo Sand

The reader also discovers the Brit Shalom ("covenant of peace") group, created in 1925. This group wanted to promote an ethic of living in Palestine with its people without any desire to replace them.

Amongst its members were Buber, Judah Leon Magnes, and Einstein, who conceived of a state for two nations with perfect equality of rights, regardless of any question of demographic superiority.

In this binational state, the holy places would have been in a situation of extraterritoriality, and there would have been no place for state religion.

Other thinkers traverse this rich and fascinating essay, such as Magnes and Buber’s 1942 Ihud (“unity”) movement and Avnery's 1956 Semitic Action. The latter defended “Canaanism,” or the idea of a nation founded neither on Jewishness nor Arabness but on binational coexistence.

As for Yehoshua, he saw in the “Israeli being” the first expression of the self-determination of the Jewish man. The Israeli writer imagined citizenship as being detached from religion.

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MIKE HUCKABEE, IN HIS OWN WORDS: WHAT TRUMP'S INCOMING U.S. AMBASSADOR THINKS ABOUT ISRAEL, PALESTINE AND 'ALMIGHTY GOD'

NO PALESTINIANS, NO WEST BANK, NO OCCUPATION: Pastor, former governor, and incoming U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has trenchant Bible-based ideas about Israel and Palestine.

Here is a round-up of his more belligerent statements over the years.

Mike Huckabee, then a Republican presidential candidate, visited the Jewish settlement of Maale HaZeitim in the Ras Al Amud neighborhood of East Jerusalem in August 2009. Credit: David Furst/AFP

By Rachel Fink
Haaretz Israel
17 November 2024

President-elect Donald Trump announced Mike Huckabee as his pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel. In his announcement, Huckabee wrote that he "loves Israel and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East."

Huckabee, a devout Evangelical Christian who was formerly Governor of Arkansas and ran twice for the Republican nomination for the U.S. presidency, says he's visited Israel and the West Bank "dozens and dozens of times" and describes his connection as "not so much political as it is visceral, personal."

President-elect Donald Trump participates in a roundtable discussion with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on October 29, 2024, in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP

As a staunch proponent of annexation, with close relations over decades with Israeli settlers and the Yesha Council, the umbrella organization of West Bank Jewish settlements, he has been explicit about what that "visceral" connection to Greater Israel means, as well as his skepticism about the national aspirations of what he habitually refers to as the "so-called Palestinians."

Here is a run-down of his most intense statements about Israel and Palestine over the last decade and a half.

“Israel is occupying the land,
but it is an occupation of land that God gave them 3,500 years ago.”
February 2024

Huckabee, a frequent guest on a podcast produced by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews organization called "Nourish Your Biblical Roots," called for using "biblical language" when speaking about Israel in an episode recorded in February.

"When people use the term 'occupy,'" Huckabee said, "I say, yeah, Israel is occupying the land, but it is an occupation of land that God gave them 3,500 years ago. It is their land."

"In Genesis, when we're told that God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel," he continued, "I'm simple-minded enough to say, 'There it is. What am I going to do? I'm going to believe that."

"This is a biblical mandate, and we need to stand on it from that perspective," Huckabee declared.

“There's no such thing as a Palestinian.”
2008, 2015, and 2024

In 2019, Huckabee railed against Congressman Rashida Tlaib for a photo that was released of a world map in her office on which Israel had been covered up by a sticky note reading "Palestine."

"Disturbing. Antisemitic," then-Governor Huckabee tweeted. "'Palestinian' Rashida Tlaib (there has NEVER been a nation called Palestine) erases Israel from the map in her office & on 1st day as Congresswoman screams obscenities about @realDonaldTrump. Do Dems support this bigotry and hate?"

Huckabee has publicly repeated his refusal to recognize Palestine many times, dating at least back to 2008, and reiterated in 2015 and in April 2024. In a video from 2008 that has now resurfaced on social media, Huckabee can be seen talking to two Orthodox Jews during a campaign stop in Massachusetts.

"There is no such thing as – I need to be careful about saying this because people will get upset – there's no such thing as a Palestinian," he told them.

“There is no such thing as a West Bank… no such thing as an occupation.”
January 2017

In 2017, Huckabee visited Ma'aleh Adumim in the West Bank. Holding a hat that read "Build Israel Great Again," Huckabee laid the cornerstone for a new neighborhood in the settlement. "I think Israel has the title deed to Judea and Samaria," Huckabee told a CNN reporter after the ceremony.

"There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as the 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."

“Giving up land is not giving land for peace; it's giving up land and peace.”
August 2015

During his second unsuccessful presidential bid, Huckabee rejected the notion that Israel's relinquishing of the occupied territories would usher in peace and recognition by its Arab neighbors.

In a video he filmed while visiting Israel in 2015, Huckabee said that "giving up land is essentially not giving land for peace, it's giving up land and peace. Because nothing good would come out of it other than putting people who are sworn to Israel's destruction closer to them."

He then equated the Palestinians with the terrorist group ISIS, saying, "I don't think you would let some people from ISIS joyfully buy the home next to you and move into your neighborhood," he said of allowing Palestinians to live near Israelis.

“[Obama's Iran deal] takes the Israelis and marches them to the door of the ovens.”
July 2015

In 2015, then-U.S. President Barack Obama brokered a deal with Iran and six world powers that limited Iran's nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Huckabee blasted the plan, calling it "feckless" and "idiotic."

"It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians," Huckabee said during an interview with far-right outlet Breitbart. "By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the ovens," he said in a reference to Nazi concentration camps.

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Huckabee's comment was widely criticized by politicians on both sides of the aisle, including the then-chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who called the remarks "grossly irresponsible" and demanded he apologize to the Jewish community.

“The boundaries of Israel are not given by the United Nations but by almighty God.”
May 2015

In a speaking appearance at an Israel Day Concert in New York's Central Park, Huckabee opened his speech by avowing what he said was the Jewish people's God-given right to the land.

"There is no explanation for Israel other than the hand of almighty God that has preserved and protected and given the Jews their homeland after 2,000 years of being scattered across the earth," the Evangelical pastor told the crowd, which applauded enthusiastically. "And in the same way, there is no explanation for the United States of America other than the providence of God's hand."

Huckabee declared later in the speech that, "Let us be clear. The boundaries of Israel are not given by the United Nations but by almighty God, and those boundaries can be affirmed by man but not reshaped by man."

“If there's a two-state solution,
the Palestinian state needs to be outside the boundaries of the nation of Israel.”
May 2015

Speaking to the Israel National News network after that event, Huckabee said that there was no room for a Palestinian state within Israel's sovereign territory. "I think it's time for us to quit playing this pretentious game that there's gonna be a two-state solution where both sides share the same country and real estate and streets, cause they're not," Huckabee said in the interview, which he gave during his 2015 run for president.

Huckabee discusses a two-state solution at the 3:38 minute mark.

"If there's a two-state solution, the Palestinian state needs to be outside the boundaries of the nation of Israel. There's plenty of land in the world where we can find a place and say, 'Okay, let's create a Palestinian state.' But not within the confines of a secure Israel."

“The U.S. should encourage the Israelis
to build as much as they can and as rapidly as they can.”
February 2011

In 2011, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist pastor, took 180 members of his congregation on a two-week trip to Israel, where they toured Christian holy sites in Bethlehem and Nazareth alongside Jewish sites like the desert fortress Masada and the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, according to an interview with Politico.

On the trip, Huckabee met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu one-on-one and attended the groundbreaking of a controversial Jewish housing project in one of Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods.

In the Politico interview, Huckabee said the visit underscored the importance of establishing settlements as a path to Israeli security. The United States "should encourage the Israelis to build as much as they can and as rapidly as they can," Huckabee was quoted as saying. He called any hope for a two-state solution "unrealistic" and said that bringing Jews from around the world was the "real answer" to the threat of losing a Jewish majority in Israel.

Huckabee also recalled visiting the Jordan River during his first trip to Israel as a 17-year-old. We had stopped by to see where Jesus was baptized, and instead, there were these great-looking Israeli girls in bikinis, just showing off and flirting," he told the outlet.

SEYMOUR HERSH | FORCE EVACUATION AND SMASH THE CAMPS

A report from inside Gaza

Displaced people use animal-drawn carts in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 20. / Photo by Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images.

By Seymour Hersh
Substack.com
20 November 2024

Israel, fortified by bombs and funding from the Biden administration, is escalating the forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands from the north of Gaza to the south amid fierce bombing and the deprivation of food and water for those who stay behind. This is continuing amid marches and other demonstrations sponsored by the religious right in Israel, whose leadership also is calling for north Gaza to be turned over to Israeli settlers. What was a worrisome rumor in Gaza seems increasingly to be a reality.

Control over all of Gaza and the West Bank is the core demand of the religious right in Israel that now dominates the government. A well-informed Washington official told me this week that the Israeli leadership will formally annex the West Bank very shortly—perhaps in two weeks—in the hope that the decisive step will end, once and for all, any talk of a two-state solution and will convince some in the skeptical Arab world to reconsider financing the planned reconstruction of Gaza. Arab communities in the West Bank have been under increasingly violent pressure from Israeli police, and armed settler attacks have become a sad staple of life.

Meanwhile, life for the two million Palestinians in Gaza grows dimmer by the day as food and fresh water are more complicated to find and more costly as United Nations relief truck convoys have increasingly become targets of attacks in areas presumably under the control of the Israeli Defense Force. The cargo ends up in the hands of criminal gangs that are rarely challenged by the IDF or local Palestinian police, who only act when confronted by public pressure.

I recently spoke with someone with sophisticated, on-the-ground knowledge of life in Gaza today, both in the north and south. This report goes beyond what even the best foreign correspondent could access. These days, getting in and out of Gaza is extremely difficult for journalists, academics, and other outsiders, requiring coordination with the Qatari or Emirates governments. The vast majority of Gazans are unable to leave.

Below is the report, which I have condensed and edited. It’s not pleasant reading.

“The conditions in the north of Gaza are holocaust conditions. We don’t use the word because it has a special place in the Western imagination and heart, but this is a holocaust in terms of collective punishment and dehumanization and the technical tools. But is it a holocaust eighty years later being done remotely and on people’s bodies. . . . A missile is dropped in a densely populated civilian area, tents mostly, and then you have drones coming in afterward to pick off people one by one. We didn’t have drones during World War II, but we do now, and the logic is pretty much the same.

“What we’re seeing happening in north Gaza is what I told you months ago the Israelis were going to do, and this is what they did. They will annex the North and the West Bank. Soon, all in the press will turn to the West Bank. The Israeli settlers have been more armed since October 7. The government and the Supreme Court in Israel support the settlers, and there are right-wing organizers and community representatives who themselves live in settlements, and they are ready.

“They feel there is no leadership in the United States to stop them. And that is really how the Middle East feels, period. This will be a new phase, and the world’s attention will suddenly go away from Gaza and Lebanon. And everybody will be talking about the annexation of the West Bank in a month or two.

“The Israelis have built roads and bypass roads and corridors in the north of Gaza, and they are now starting to nicely connect all, as you can see if you look at satellite images. The Israelis always said they were going to do this. . . . And those Palestinians living in north Gaza will either be exterminated en masse, as they are now, or they will be pushed south where they are humiliated and stripped and tortured and have to endure unbearable conditions. Anyone I speak to who recently came from the north to the south describes the horrid condition of having their children taken away from them. . . . Children are being lined up on one side, and the Gazans are told to pick up a random child and go with that child to the south even if it’s not their child . . . and not knowing if your child made it. These kinds of horrific tearing of the social fabric are happening.

“Meanwhile, in the south, where there once was food but no cleaning materials, there is now no food. The Israelis are likely preparing to gather everybody into specific pockets in the south. So, it is about annexing the north and concentrating the population in particular pockets in the south. This is what they will do.

“And I’m not being a pessimist. They will do this: they are budgeting and planning for it now. If you see it, you see it, and if you do not, then you will be surprised in a few months when the Israelis declare it themselves.”

“If you are looking for hope, it is in the fact that people in Gaza haven’t become zombies and are not eating each other or ripping each other apart. That is not happening, but the social fabric is being sundered. Kids are coming into hospitals from stab wounds from uncles and fathers because they overate. And there are cases of rape coming in. I mean, there is a breaking of the social fabric after a year of hellish nightmares . . . after a year of all international order and systems collapsing and failing to treat Palestinians as humans. There is absolutely a breaking, but there is still hope that I see in that people are not ripping each other apart. There is still the production of art. And people are still growing food and crops in the camps.

“And this is what Israel is now targeting: the vigor of the refugees and the camps. These are the enemies of Israel. The Israelis thought by turning people into refugees, they would break them. But they are empowering them. So this is why they are going after the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and targeting the right of return, targeting the refugees. And why the Israelis are constantly bombing, bombing, and smashing things . . . the tents and refugee camps that are built all over Gaza now, in addition to what already existed. Israel is going after the refugees and the camps because they see, after eight decades of doing what they did, that these are places of memory and history and organizing and identity, and that is what they are trying to smash. Right? When trying to hit a population from existence, that is what you go after.

“So the Israelis are not following the logic of war; they are following the logic of genocide. And when we understand that, we can also understand why their bombing is happening the way it is.”

I will report on the Israeli point of view about the future of Gaza in another column tomorrow.

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