Huckabee Declares Israel Has Biblical Right to Middle East From Nile to Euphrates

America’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is raising eyebrows with a declaration that Israel possesses a biblical right to claim all the territory between the Nile and Euphrates rivers.During a heated three-hour interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson at Ben Gurion Airport on Friday, Mr. Huckabee defended Israel’s theological claim to the vast region, which is bestowed by God on the descendants of Abraham in Genesis 15.When Mr. Carlson pressed him on whether Israel had the right to take over the entire area described in this “original deed,” Mr. Huckabee said, “It would be fine if they took it all.”“Israel is a land that God gave, through Abraham, to a people that he chose,” Mr. Huckabee said, describing the Jewish people’s connection to the land as a combination of “a people, a place, and a purpose.”The ambassador, a Baptist minister and avowed Zionist, later clarified that the Israeli government is not seeking to expand its borders to the entire area encompassing the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq.The interview, which aired Friday, quickly devolved into a heated exchange when Mr. Carlson questioned why genetic testing wasn’t being used to determine who actually qualifies as a descendent of Abraham.“Abram’s descendants are the ones who have the right to have this land. Correct?” Mr. Carlson said.“Yes,” Mr. Huckabee said.“Okay, why don’t we do genetic testing on everybody in the land and find out who Abram’s descendants are?” Mr. Carlson asked. “It’s really simple. We’ve cracked the human genome. We can do that. Why don’t we do that? Would you be against doing that?”When Mr. Huckabee expressed uncertainty about what such testing would prove, Mr. Carlson pushed back: “What do you mean? It would prove who Abraham’s descendants are and who has a right to live here and who doesn’t according to the theology that you yourself just explained.”The conversation also touched on the status of Christians in Israel, a topic the two had previously sparred over publicly. Mr. Huckabee pushed back against Mr. Carlson’s claims that Israel mistreats Christians. “When you said the Christians were kicked out, Tucker, Christianity is growing in Israel. And there is a big lie that goes out there, but let me finish this because I keep hearing that Christians are really not treated well in Israel — that’s simply a lie. It is a lie. There were 34,000 Christians in Israel in 1948. There are 184,000 Christians here today,” Mr. Huckabee said.The conversation turned toward the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where Israel has killed and wounded tens of thousands of Palestinians — many of them Hamas militants — in a campaign sparked by Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 Israelis on February 7, 2023. Since then, entire neighborhoods in Gaza have been destroyed and most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been displaced.Pressed about the deaths of some Hamas operatives as young as 14, Mr. Huckabee made no apology for their fate. “If they participated in that, then God help them,” he said.“If these were your children being held hostage in Gaza, what would you do to get them out?” Mr. Huckabee asked. Mr. Carlson replied, “I would not kill children, period. And I wouldn’t make excuses for killing children, either.”

Huckabee Declares Israel Has Biblical Right to Middle East From Nile to Euphrates

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