The popular conservative pundit Tucker Carlson recently interviewed U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
Carlson pressed the former Arkansas Governor on the country and the U.S. relationship with it, repeatedly leaving Huckabee flummoxed. Huckabee made many perplexing claims, but his most controversial statement came when Carlson asked him whether Israel has a biblical right to the land.
Carlson asked Huckabee, who is a Baptist minister and a Christian Zionist, about a Bible verse in which God promises Abraham that his descendants will receive land “from the wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
Carlson said this basically amounted to the entire Middle East.
“Israel is a land that God gave, through Abraham, to a people that he chose,” responded Huckabee. “It was a people, a place and a purpose.”
Asked whether Israel had a right to it, he responded, “It would be fine if they took it all.”
At the time I am typing this, the Carlson/Huckabee interview has been watched over 3 million times and is already causing something of an international scandal.
The governments of more than a dozen countries, including allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, issued a joint statement condemning Huckabee’s comments and expressing “strong concern,” as his position directly contradicts official U.S. policy on annexation.
“The Ministries reaffirmed that Israel has no sovereignty whatsoever over the Occupied Palestinian Territory or any other occupied Arab lands,” explains the statement. “They reiterated their firm rejection of any attempts to annex the West Bank or separate it from the Gaza Strip, their strong opposition to the expansion of settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and their categorical rejection of any threat to the sovereignty of Arab states.”
“They further warned that the continuation of Israel’s expansionist policies and unlawful measures will only inflame violence and conflict in the region and undermine the prospects for peace and called for an end to these incendiary statements,” it continues. “The Ministries underscored their countries’ steadfast commitment to the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of their independent state along the lines of 4 June 1967, and the end of the occupation of all Arab lands.”
The incident has forced Trump officials, such as Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Allison Hooker, to call Arab leaders and assure them that Huckabee was expressing his personal views and that the administration’s policies have not shifted.
In addition to the international fallout, the interview is reverberating domestically, as it further symbolizes the growing rift over Israel within the Republican Party. A Times of Israel report on the situation refers to the wider fight as “battle for the GOP’s soul.”
The new controversy comes just two weeks after right-wing activist Carrie Prejean Boller was ousted from Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission after criticizing Israel during a hearing.
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https://mondoweiss.net/2026/02/the-shift-international-outcry-over-huckabee-comments/