Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee spoke last night (Tuesday) at the Israel Heritage Foundation and Arutz Sheva - Israel National News conference in Jerusalem.
In his remarks, Huckabee described how his love for the State of Israel began with his first visit to the Jewish State in 1973.
"Something happened deep within me in that very first trip 50 years ago this summer. I'd never been here before but I felt at home in a place I'd never been. I cannot describe why that is other than that it was not political, it was not economic, it was not geographic, it was spiritual. Because I had an understanding that this is the land that God had set aside for his people 3,800 years ago when he gave Abraham the title deed to all of Israel and said: 'Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed,'" Huckabee said.
He noted the "extraordinary similarities" between the US and Israel, saying that "both countries having been created by people who escaped the galloping terror of tyranny and wanted their families to live in freedom and to be able to worship and have a liberty that should be the right of every human being on the planet."
"The Zionist movement brought people who had been scattered across the earth for 2,000 years back to the homeland, and over these years we have seen the dry bones come to life as the proper promised they would, and we have seen the desert bloom," he said. "When people say, 'Why do you keep coming to Israel?' I say: 'Because God is up to something incredible there, and I don't want to miss it."
"There is no explanation for Israel, nor is there an explanation for the United States, apart from the intervention of God," the former governor stated. "I don't see how anyone with a semblance of intelligence can see the miracle of Israel or for that matter, the miracle of the United States, and come to any other conclusion [than] that this is not just man's doing, this is God's doing."
Huckabee reiterated his position that Israel has the most legitimate claim to the ancient heartland of Biblical Judea and Samaria. "When people say, 'Well, what do you think about the occupied territory?' I say: 'Oh, it's occupied, all right, by the people who have the title deed and have an indigenous sovereign right to be in this land! It's occupied by the people who own it!"
"You'll never hear me use the term 'West Bank,' because Judea and Samaria are not the West Bank of something, they are the land that God has given to his chosen people," he said.
"It's irrational to me to think that somehow, there are those who believe that if Israel just continues to give more and more land away, they will get peace, when in every single situation, without exception, when they give away land, they get less land, and they get less peace," he declared.
Huckabee stated that "there can be no two-state solution because nobody can simply say: 'Yes. Even though the land is ours, and even though we have the title deed, we're simply going to just allow people who don't even acknowledge our existence to take a big chunk of it."
He declared that "Jerusalem is the undisputed and undivided capital of the Jewish State, and it always has been. And no other people have ever called Jerusalem home and capital."
"When the United States under President Trump moved the embassy here, I was there in that ceremony and I wept. Because it was surreal to sit there and finally see the United States honor a promise that it had been making for 30 years under both Democrat and Republican presidents, who always found an excuse why not to do it.
Huckabee described his meeting with former President Donald Trump after the US embassy was opened in Jerusalem. Trump told him that he moved the embassy "because I said I would and it was the right thing to do."
"I am convinced that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and I want the United States never to forget that we don't have a better ally and a more appropriate partner for world security and safety than we have here in the State of Israel," Huckabee said.