Mike Huckabee Breaks with Trump, Says 'There Would Not Be America' Without Israel

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U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee countered President Donald Trump’s Monday statement that there would be no Israel without the actions he’s taken to protect the country.

Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher, disagreed.

Speaking at the International Conference on Israeli Heritage in Judea and Samaria Tuesday, Huckabee said, “It is your heritage, without a doubt, but it is also the heritage of the United States. Without Israel, without the Jewish foundation, there would not be America. We owe our very existence to what happened in this land,” according to The Jerusalem Post.

On Monday, Trump said during a bilateral meeting with the Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in France, “Without me, there would be no Israel — because no other president was willing to do what I did.”

The president’s comments came in the context of voicing his frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for launching retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon while Trump seeks to sign a peace treaty with Iran.

“Israeli’s fighting Hezbollah too long, and too many people are being killed, and you don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody,” he said.

“I’ve had a great relationship with Bibi, but now Bibi has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon,” Trump added. “I’m not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and with Hezbollah.”

“They should have been able to handle the job faster. It just goes on forever, and when that happens, it throws a negative light on the big deal, and that’s the deal with Iran.”

Supporting Huckabee’s view that there would be no America without Israel, the Declaration of Independence opens, “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

The preeminent law book at the time of the founding, Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Law of England,” elaborated on the phrasing of the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”

“Upon these two foundations, the law of nature [established by God and observable in creation] and the law of revelation [found in the Bible’s Old and New Testaments and directly revealed by God], depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these,” Blackstone wrote. The Bible was written mostly by Jewish authors, and the Old Testament is largely about ancient Israel.

The Declaration continues, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The Constitution concludes, “Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.”

The Year of our Lord is a reference to the birth of Jesus Christ, who was Jewish and ministered in ancient Israel, and the twelfth year from independence in 1776, when the Declaration was adopted.

Several Christian leaders have likened Trump to a modern-day Cyrus-like leader. Netanyahu made the comparison in 2018, saying to the president after the U.S. moved its embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem, “I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory. So we remember the proclamation of the great King Cyrus the Great — Persian king. Twenty-five hundred years ago, he proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon can come back and rebuild our temple in Jerusalem,” according to The Christian Post.

Following the U.S. joint bombing strikes with Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June, signs went up in Israel likening Trump to Cyrus.

However, evangelical Christians, like Huckabee, see God as Israel’s ultimate protector, and they believe He is continuing to fulfill his plans through his chosen people.

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Contributing Journalist

SummaryMore Biographical InformationRecent PostsContact

Randy DeSoto has written more than 4,000 articles for The Western Journal since he began with the company in 2015. He is a graduate of West Point and Regent University School of Law. He is the author of the book "We Hold These Truths" and screenwriter of the political documentary "I Want Your Money."

Birthplace

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Nationality

American

Honors/Awards

Graduated dean's list from West Point

Education

United States Military Academy at West Point, Regent University School of Law

Books Written

We Hold These Truths

Professional Memberships

Virginia and Pennsylvania state bars

Location

Phoenix, Arizona

Languages Spoken

English

Topics of Expertise

Politics, Entertainment, Faith