Ambassador Mike Huckabee must have the patience of a saint; it is the only way to explain his serenity during his interview with Tucker Carlson. Huckabee was imperturbable, unflappable. Carlson, by contrast, has the demeanor of a deranged person, with a demonic laugh that erupts at inappropriate times for the oddest reasons. He speaks in spurts and flits from topic to topic without any coherence.
Carlson also has the inflated ego of the narcissist, bent out of shape because PM Netanyahu rejected his entreaties for an interview. Who is Carlson after all but a fired TV host who now has his own podcast like a million other people? Today he has many listeners because hatred sells but that well will eventually run dry. Other haters will compete for his audience, at least until they get real jobs that take up their time.
He is also quite scatterbrained. Huckabee is the US Ambassador to Israel; what connection does he have to Jeffrey Epstein or the Epstein files? None. So why badger Huckabee about them? As Ben Shapiro points out, Carlson is a devotee of the “Just Asking Questions" copout, by which Carlson normalizes nuts and haters of all stripes by interviewing them, asking questions but no follow-ups or challenges, thus allowing them to spew their hatred unconstrained by facts or decency.
Carlson has been forced to apologize for several wild statements, including his declared hatred for Christian Zionists but also for accusing President Herzog for befriending Jeffrey Epstein and visiting the infamous island. Herzog strenuously objected, claiming he never met Epstein even once (it is good to know that there are some Jews who had no dealings with Epstein), and Carlson apologized for his accusation that was entirely baseless and slanderous. So why make it?
It is fair to ask: how friendly was Tucker Carlson with Jeffrey Epstein? How much money did Epstein lend him? How many times did Carlson visit the island and are the reports of their close association true? I have no evidence at all - but I am Just Asking Questions. What a perverse game. It is a devious way of spreading lies without being accountable.
I believe Carlson when he says he is not an anti-Semite. Why would anyone have anything against Semites? What did the Semites ever do to offend anyone? But I do believe he hates Jews and Israel and his use of certain code words and phrases - almost one a minute - betrayed his animus.
Israel is a “police state." Christians are persecuted. He is “paying" for Israel’s crimes through his tax dollars. Israel committed genocide on his dime and murders children. He is obsessed with Israel’s right to exist, as he is for no other country. The Israeli government “shields child molesters." Netanyahu’s parents did not speak Hebrew (!). Netanyahu has no claim to the land of Israel because he is not religious. Carlson has no idea what “from the river to the sea" means. The United States went to war in Iraq because of Israel and for Israel, and Netanyahu was the one who talked George Bush into regime change in Iraq. (Alas, for Carlson, Netanyahu was not the Prime Minister of Israel then, nor during the entire Bush Presidency, and wasn’t even in government when Muslim Arabs - not Israelis - attacked America on September 11, 2001.)
There are more Christians in Israel than there are in Qatar (unlike Carlson’s assertion to the contrary) and unlike in Carlson’s patron Qatar, Israeli Christians are full citizens while Christians in Qatar are mostly not.
He did raise three questions for which he could have received better answers, not that his mind is open to answers. He is fanatically obsessed with the Law of Return, something that to him smacks of racism and rabid nationalism. To be fair, he contrasts that with America’s open borders until recently, but why blame Israel because the demographics of the United States and Europe are swiftly changing?
Carlson asked: what is a Jew? And what right do the Jewish people have to the land of Israel? Is Jewishness an ethnicity or a religious affiliation?
To the latter question, Huckabee properly answered “both," not that Carlson could understand or would accept that. But it needs elaboration, as this is something that perplexes Gentiles. The Jewish people are a religio-nation. We have a dual identity, given to us by G-d. The Torah states (Shemot 6:7): “I will take you to be My people and I will be for you G-d." We are both an ethnic group and a religion, and in both capacities we were granted a relatively small territory on earth in which we were mandated to build a holy state.
A Jew born of a Jewish mother, or converted according to halakha, is a Jew, a member of both the religion and the nation. We are heirs to the land of Israel through the Bible (as Huckabee pointed out repeatedly) and via international law and organizations (as Huckabee also pointed out repeatedly, to no avail.) In another whopper of an error, Carlson insisted that the Balfour Declaration was not enshrined in international law, apparently unaware that it was adopted by the League of Nations that awarded the mandate over the land of Israel to Britain on that basis.
But Carlson was also extremely mystified by Huckabee’s assertion of our biblical claims to the land of Israel, which, accordingly, should give Israel rights to all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates (we can call that “from the river to the river.") Huckabee deflected - Israel is not claiming Jordan, Iraq, Syria, etc. - but there is a better answer. The Bible proposes several maps for the land of Israel. G-d delineated one for Avraham - from the river to the river (note that the “River of Egypt" does not necessarily mean the Nile). But at the end of Bamidbar (Chapter 34), the Torah spells out the borders of conquest that adhere more closely to Israel’s current borders, save for a sliver of land in southern Lebanon and east of the Jordan River. The conquest of Yehoshua resulted in still a third map that is different from the other two, and King David’s borders were even larger.
The truth is that the borders of Israel according to the Torah are somewhat fluid, much like the borders of the United States when independence was declared almost two centuries ago. The original thirteen colonies occupied territory mainly along the Atlantic coast but the US extended its borders to the Pacific Ocean and beyond in accordance with the “manifest destiny" it proclaimed. Of course, the only territorial “destiny" that is truly “manifest" is the divine one that bestowed the land of Israel on the people of Israel. And the Euphrates border? Consider that a Messianic vision - except, perhaps, if our neighbors to the east attack us and are defeated.
Carlson was also bewildered by the grant of land to the descendants of Avraham. How can they be defined? He even called for a DNA test, which Huckabee parried by saying that such would exclude righteous converts. He could have added that the Torah prescribes that only descendants of Avraham through Yitzchak share our covenantal mission and rights to the land of Israel (Breisheet 21:12, Nedarim 31a), by implication excluding descendants of Yishmael and Esav.
Asked to prove that Netanyahu is a Jew who shares in the covenant, Huckabee appropriately cited the Mesorah, and movingly portrayed the Jewish connection to the land of Israel through unending residence here, even after the destruction of the Temple; that we face Jerusalem in prayer wherever we are in the world (consider: Muslims praying in Israel literally turn their backs on Jerusalem and face Mecca); our adherence to the Torah and the Hebrew language; and our embrace of the covenant. Carlson was unmoved, if he was even listening.
Thus the Right of Return - vilified by Carlson - assures that the Jewish nation-state can survive. That vexes Carlson, who is untroubled by even more restrictive citizenship criteria in Japan, the Emirates, or his patron Qatar, all US allies, where the average immigrant can never become a citizen no matter how long they live there and even if they are born there. And Carlson fully embraces the classic lie - popularized but not invented by the Nazis - that we Jews are not the descendants of the real Jews of antiquity but imposters. Apparently, according to Carlson, Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish state because Jews simply do not exist.
Carlson was particularly angered by Huckabee’s meeting Jonathan Pollard, even terming him the “most dangerous spy in American history." Really? Worse than Benedict Arnold? He uttered this bit of ignorance with an abundance of confidence, willfully unaware that Pollard was accused of spying for the Soviet Union by Aldrich Ames, to deflect attention from the person who was actually spying for the Soviet Union, whose name happened to be Aldrich Ames, who died last month after serving 32 years in prison.
Carlson also seemed blissfully unaware of the true nature of American aid to Israel. As the ambassador correctly pointed out, all of this money is spent in America and subsidizes the US arms industry. Furthermore, the US return on this investment is more than tenfold annually, in terms of intelligence Israel provides and the promotion of US interests in the region and beyond.
He could have added that the US has spent far more money maintaining bases in Germany and Japan eighty years after World War II, as well as provided Ukraine just in the last few years, than it has ever granted Israel. He clearly believes that any foreign aid is wasted money that should be spent in the US. That is a plausible but unconvincing argument, akin to claiming that his advertisers waste money because I will never patronize their products, so why are they paying him. But others will, and so advertisers assume there will be a return on their investment. The same principle applies to foreign aid to Israel, if not other countries.
Perhaps the most egregious and outrageous of Carlson’s ramblings is his moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. True, he admittedly hates Hamas, but without admitting it, he hates Israel as well. Hamas slaughters people and Israel slaughters people. Huckabee tried to explain the difference between the assailant and the assaulted, the victimizer and the victim, but unsuccessfully, no fault of the ambassador’s. Carlson pronounced himself, as a Christian, opposed to all wars and violence. Really? Even the Revolutionary War? The Civil War? World War II? Does he not subscribe to the “just war" doctrine of the Christians, or is he an absolutist, a pacifist, who is intolerant of any violence at all?
In any event, Carlson’s abhorrence of violence, “as a Christian," sounds tone-deaf to Jews considering our history as victims of anti-Jewish Christian violence, forced conversions, blood libels, and the like. The good news is that Jews and Christians have mostly reconciled in the last few decades; the bad news is that Carlson seems intent on reviving the classic Christian religious-based hatred of Jews.
In truth, I haven’t paid much attention to him in years but was urged to watch this interview. Carlson’s manner was maddening. He was tactless, argumentative, frenetic, manic, ignorant, quick to distort Huckabee’s words and repeatedly so, and unable to answer any of Huckabee’s questions. He presents as a tad disturbed.
I did learn two things. Mike Huckabee has exquisite patience and must have been a fine pastor. And Qatar Carlson, I mean Tucker Carlson, should be barred from future visits to Israel as a peddler of Nazi and radical Muslim ideology, an enemy of Jews and Israel, and - it will shortly become clear - the United States as well.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky teaches Torah in Israel, serves as Senior Research Associate at the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy (JCAP.ngo), and as Israel Region Vice-President at the Coalition for Jewish Values.