Israel shouldn’t be forced to give up land, Huckabee says

MONTREAL — Mike Huckabee, RIGHT, the former candidate for the Republican U.S. presidential nomination, warned against pressuring Israel into conceding any more territory in the hope of gaining peace.

“We should not force Israel to give up land in order to appease the
Palestinians,” Huckabee said April 13 to applause before an overflow
audience at Congregation Zichron Kedoshim.

“It is foolish to ask Israel, with its tiny piece of real estate, to give it up to those who are avowed to destroying the nation of Israel. It makes no sense at all.”

He suggested that Arab states find a home for the Palestinians on the vast territory they control, rather than have Israel hand over land it needs for its security.

Huckabee, who dropped out of his party’s race for president in March after realizing he could not overtake John McCain for his party’s nomination, thinks the Palestinians may not be ready for statehood. “With their  history of terrorism and violence, they have not shown a level of responsibility to be entrusted with property and sovereignty.”

The United States would be breaking faith with “the only true democracy and its only constant and loyal ally in the Middle East” if it pressured the Jewish state into trading land for peace.

Huckabee was the guest speaker of the third annual Evelyn and Samuel Margolick Memorial Lecture, sponsored by their son, businessman and native Montrealer Lionel Margolick of Detroit.

Huckabee filled the synagogue’s small sanctuary and basement, where the overflow could watch on closed-circuit TV.

Huckabee said former U.S president Jimmy Carter was “dead wrong” in characterizing Israel as practising apartheid, and in seeking to meet with Hamas. “I do not share his view that you can make any progress sitting down with a terrorist organization.”

An ordained Southern Baptist minister, Huckabee noted that he has visited Israel nine times, and each time he has visited Yad Vashem. He has also taken his three children there.

Asked if he is interested in being McCain’s running mate, Huckabee, a two-term governor of Arkansas, replied: “The vice-presidency is a job no one says they want, but no one turns down… If John McCain calls, I’ll be quite surprised, but I’ll deal with that at the time.”

In the meantime, he joked, he is not sitting by the phone or telling his wife to leave the line free.

Commenting on the Democratic presidential primaries, Huckabee believes Barack Obama has sewn up the nomination. “Americans want change, but I don’t think they have given it a lot of thought. They just want something different,” he said.

“McCain’s challenge is not to just go on as before, but not to overly distance himself from Bush, which would alienate the party. It’s tough.”

Huckabee likened a McCain-Obama match-up to going to a car dealership.

“We see a new car in the showroom and love it. Then we realize we can’t make the payments. If Americans make their choice for president on the showroom floor, Obama will be the next president. If they make it in the sales manager’s office, McCain will be the next president.”

Huckabee believes Obama handled questions about his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as well as he could, distancing himself from Wright’s most objectionable opinions, but not coming off as “a fair-weather friend.”

Huckabee said the black church leader has made “inflammatory and indefensible” comments about the United States, but they have to be understood in the context of growing up in the Deep South when racism was virulent.

“As horrible as some of the things are that he has said, I’m not sure that if I had black skin I would not have a bigger chip on my shoulder than he [Wright] does. Let’s debate him, not completely dismiss him.”

On Iraq, Huckabee contended the United States is “naïve” to think democracy could take root there.

“The problem in Iraq is that kids are raised to think it is OK to kill somebody to advance your goals. Democracy will never function in that environment… There are embedded cultural differences that can’t be overcome simply by saying, ‘Let’s have an election.’

“Dictatorship, hopefully a benevolent one, is perhaps the only way for Iraq.”

Huckabee said the decision to invade Iraq was “not based on a lie, but a mistake. There was no intention to deceive people.”

The fear that deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was rational.

“If we hadn’t gone in, and he used them on Israel, Iran or the Kurds, people would say, ‘Why didn’t we do something?’”

He faulted Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for “financially, diplomatically and militarily doing nothing to bring stability to the region. The Saudis have free rein to use oil dollars from to build madrassas, where they are taught to come and kill us.”