The "Horror"... The "Horror"...

There are times when I feel heart sorry for President Obama. Here's this highly intelligent man, elected on a wave of euphoria, and the minute he tries to do what he was elected to do, the full Republican insane machine is dropped on his head. He's accused of being a socialist, a fascist, a granny killer and any other thing these shameless baboons can think of.

However, the place where I expected him to suffer most opposition, was with his policy towards Israel. But, strangely, that hasn't really happened. Mainly because he hasn't started asking Israel to do anything terribly difficult yet, other than comply with international law, so there has been very little support for Israel's intransigence, even from the Clinton's and other powerful Israeli supporters.

Which is what makes Mike Huckabee's visit to Israel stand out so much. Huckabee is on a tour of Israel to highlight what New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind says is the "horror" of Obama's policies towards Israel:

"This is an opportunity to shine the spotlight on Obama's policy in Jerusalem, which has just been a horror."

And just what has been the "horror" of Obama's policy towards the Israelis? Huckabee explains:

Huckabee, who is focusing his current tour of Israel on visits to east Jerusalem and the West Bank and meetings with settler leaders, has positioned himself in direct opposition to US President Barack Obama and his administration's demands that Israel halt all construction over the Green Line.

"It concerns me when there are some in the United States who would want to tell Israel that it cannot allow people to live in their own country, wherever they want," Huckabee had told reporters earlier in the day.

The notion that the United States cannot tell another country where it's people can and cannot live is palpable nonsense, as Glenn Greenwald so succinctly points out:

Apparently, insisting that Israel stop occupying and building settlements in land that doesn't belong to it is "telling Jewish people where they should and should not live." Every country should invoke that standard -- Russia should have responded to American objections to its 2008 invasion of Georgia by insisting that the U.S. has no right to "tell Russians where they should and should not live." It was terrible how the U.S., opposed to Saddam's 1991 invasion of Kuwait, tried to tell Iraqis where they should and should not live. And immigration opponents in the U.S. should really stop telling Mexicans where they should and should not live.

Now, to make a remark as contentious as that, Huckabee has to be thinking that the West Bank and Gaza belongs to Israel, he literally has to be in direct opposition to international law to come out with such a comment. I mean, if international law doesn't matter, and if Israel can ignore it and state that she doesn't accept that the West Bank and Gaza aren't part of Eretz Israel, then what's to stop other nations from following suit?

Because the only way Huckabee's outrageous statement makes any sense is if one agrees that all of the land that most of us regard as Palestine is actually part of Israel. That's the only way that Huckabee could use the phrase, "in their own country".

The truth, as the rest of us know, is that this land is not part of Israel. But US policy, up until the arrival of Obama, has been to allow the Israelis to build on - to steal - that land as if it were.

That's what's enraging Huckabee and the Likud right in Israel. Obama is going against the wink-wink policy of previous administrations which said that the Palestinians had to comply with US peace proposals, but the Israelis need not. Israel could talk of peace but - in reality - simply keep appropriating more and more Palestinian land.

And, as Greenwald also points out, isn't it usually considered bad form for a US politician to criticise the US on foreign soil?

Will there be an outcry from any precincts over Huckabee's conduct? Highly doubtful. Rules governing what one can and cannot do with regard to "foreign countries" tend to be waived very quickly when it comes to Israel -- and America's Right. Indeed, Israel-centric former Bush officials such as Elliot Abrams have been continuously attempting to undercut U.S. policy towards the Middle East, publicly justifying Israeli anger towards Obama and explicitly siding with Israel over their own country in a dispute over whether Israel has the "right" to expand West Bank settlements (apparently, Israel possesses this "right" because Elliot Abrams secretly told Israelis that it was OK to take more Palestinian land if they wanted to).

What has been most bizarre about the increased tensions and even hostilities between the U.S. and Israel is that it arises out of the most minimal shift in American policy: merely demanding that Israel comply with a small subset of what virtually the entire world, all U.S. past administrations, and U.N. resolutions all agree are its obligations. And the impetus for the Obama administration's focus on these demands is clear and obvious: Israel's continued settlement growth in land that is not theirs harms U.S. interests in multiple, substantial ways, even as the U.S. pours enormous resources into aiding Israel. Yet large swaths of the American Right side with that foreign country over their own, and in Huckabee's case, even travel to that foreign country in order to oppose American policy.

Not only will Huckabee suffer no criticism for berating US policy from foreign soil, his coffers will fill with donations from groups who oppose what Obama is asking: That Israel complies with international law. Apparently that very notion is a "horror".

UPDATE:

I got to wondering whether or not Huckabee is an end timer after reading about what he is saying in Israel. I found this:

That got me wondering about whether Huckabee supports the worldview that drives LaHaye's bestselling "Left Behind" series, which Huckabee described as "a compelling story for non-theologians." Although the 16 books in the series are fiction, LaHaye has told interviewers they accurately dramatize real moral and geopolitical tensions and represent a fictional depiction of what's likely to happen as we reach the "end times," the chaotic period before Christ's return to earth. The villain in "Left Behind" novels is the secretary-general of the United Nations, and war and tribulation can only come to an end when everyone accepts Jesus. LaHaye also has some out-there ideas about the role of Israel, believing the embattled nation must expand to its "Greater Israel" borders before Christ can return to defeat Satan.

When Huckabee was asked about a Palestinian state on "Face the Nation" recently, he famously answered, "There are a lot of options that involve other territory that doesn't have to include the West Bank or the Golan Heights. There is an enormous amount of land in Arab control all over the Middle East."

In other words, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that Huckabee doesn't believe in the two state solution at all.

I wonder if that's because of this:



Huckabee should be made to answer whether or not he is an end timer. That would certainly go some way to explaining his view of Israel and Palestine.

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Tags: Huckabee, Israel, Palestine, illegal settlements