The Top 11 Lies That Mike Huckabee Told Tucker Carlson About Israel and Palestine
I debunk the brazenly dishonest answers that the US ambassador to Israel gave the former Fox host in their viral interview, which even Carlson failed to challenge.
Tucker Carlson’s interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has gone viral, with 2.5 million views on Twitter and almost 3 million views on YouTube.
It has also provoked a major global diplomatic incident, with more than a dozen Muslim-majority countries issuing a joint statement describing Huckabee’s comments defending Israel’s “biblical right” to take over the Middle East as “dangerous and inflammatory.”
Carlson’s tough questioning of Huckabee was a massive indictment of our mainstream media. Why can’t Sunday show interviewers ask follow-up questions when US officials make fantastical claims on behalf of Israel, in the way that Carlson did? Why can’t nightly news anchors ask pro-Israel officials to justify Zionist claims to the land of Palestine, in the way that Carlson did?
Nevertheless, over the course of the two-and-a-half-hour interview in Israel, Huckabee made multiple false claims that even Carlson failed to challenge or rebut. Sounding more like Israel’s ambassador to America than America’s ambassador to Israel, Huckabee produced fake statistics and bogus timelines while misrepresenting his own record.
So here are the top 11 lies that Huckabee told Carlson, debunked by yours truly:
1.
TUCKER CARLSON: “Jonathan Pollard. I’m just going to show the name to you and have you explain.”
MIKE HUCKABEE: “I’m glad you asked. Interestingly, there’s been a lot of things about it. You’re the first person who has asked me about it, which I find amazing. So I’m glad you did.”
TUCKER CARLSON: “Really?”
MIKE HUCKABEE: “Yeah. The very first person.”
A brazen, easily debunked lie from Huckabee, within moments of the interview beginning. As journalist Yashar Ali noted, Israeli reporter Neria Kraus had already confronted Huckabee in January over his controversial meeting with Jonathan Pollard – the former US intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel. That was just weeks ago. And what did Huckabee do then? Exactly what he did with Carlson: attack the New York Times for reporting on it, dodge the question, and change the subject.
2.
“They were attacked again in 1956. They won the war. They were attacked again in 1967 by five countries.”
In 1956, the Suez crisis was the result of a British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt. The war began on Oct. 29 when the Israeli Air Force launched a series of attacks on Egyptian positions across the Sinai – and not vice versa.
In 1967, the Six-Day War began on June 5 with the Israeli Air Force mounting a surprise attack on Egypt’s airfields – and not vice versa. The Israelis claimed it was a preemptive war to prevent an impending invasion by Egypt. Yet, in 1982, in a speech to the National Defense College, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin admitted: “In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that [President Gamal Abdel] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
3.
“It was a declaration – an assumption and a declaration that was done by Lord Balfour in Great Britain. At that time, this land was under the British Mandate. And he said the Jews should have the land that was theirs from 3,800 years ago.”
The Balfour Declaration was issued by Lord Balfour, the then British foreign secretary and a card-carrying antisemite, in November 1917. The British Mandate, or administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, did not begin until the San Remo conference in April 1920, after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. When Lord Balfour issued his declaration, Palestine was still part of the Ottoman Empire.
It is also worth noting here that the Balfour Declaration did indeed call for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, but also added that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
4.
TUCKER CARLSON: “There are many more Christians in Qatar than there are in Israel.”
MIKE HUCKABEE: “That’s not true.”
It is true. There are almost double the number of Christians in Qatar (about 340,000 in 2020) as there are in Israel (about 182,000 in 2022).
5.
“Well, the only numbers we have come from this dubious entity called the Gaza Health Ministry. You know who that is? It’s Hamas.”