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Notes -
https://youtube.com/watch?v=XS7itdfgNnU
Over the weekend, an interview between Tucker Carlson and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has been making the rounds. The general thrust of the Interview is: Mike Huckabee is something called a "Christian Zionist", that is:
Steelman: An evangelical protestant Christian who recognizes the unique place in history and theology that The Jewish people occupy, and recognizes that Israel has a Right to Exist.
Strawman: An evangelical protestant Christian who worships the Jews as the main character of history and society, and sees the rest of the world as second-tier citizens who exist to support the work of Jewish people.
The interview attempts to answer what Christian zionism is, what Mike Huckabee believes, etc.
After listening to this, it seems as though Mike is not doing a great job of hiding the fact that he is closer to the strawman than the steelman on this one. Some points:
Huckabee hosted a meeting with Johnathan Pollard, an Israeli who stole US state secrets and sold them to Israel, and subsequently Russia during the cold war. Pollard currently lives in Israel, and Huckabee has been criticized for hosting a meeting with him.
Israel is currently a safe haven for sex criminals (or accused sex criminals). There is a not-insignificant number of men who have been charged with sex crimes in the US, who flee to Israel, and are protected by the Israeli government from extradition to the US. Or more specifically: the US simply ignores these people once they are safely in Israel. Tucker confronts Huckabee about this.
There are a few other things like this, Tucker also asserts that the Iraq war was done on behalf of Israel. The entire interview is quite spicy, and I recommend listening to it.
The "money" quote, however, is one where Tucker is pressing Huckabee on what Israel is, what "a right to exist" is, and what the borders that Israel is entitled to are. Tucker quotes the bible passage that Huckabee is citing to justify Israel's ownership, and points out that the land indicated in the passage is substantially larger than the land Israel currently claims. Tucker's question is, essentially: "if Israel has a right to the land they currently occupy due to this Bible passage, then don't they actually have a right to a majority of the entire Middle East, due to the same Bible passage"
Huckabee's response is, essentially: yes they do. If they want to take it, then that would be fine.
Hard to overstate what a big deal this has been over the weekend. This undermines 30 years of US foreign policy with regards to the ME, and vindicates every fear that every ME nation has had with regards to their own defense, their desire for a nuclear weapon, etc. It's my opinion that this is bad enough that Huckabee needs to be very publicly fired immediately, and that a lot of reassurance needs to be made to these other countries that Huckabee is essentially in a cult, that his insane beliefs do not in ANY way represent the beliefs of the broader US government, and that we will never allow another member of his cult into any position of power within the US government.
The problem: none of that is true. Yes, from my perspective (a Catholic) Huckabee is in an insane, anti-christian cult with absolutely insane beliefs. My (somewhat unrelated) point is that this is why you need The Church. But there are plenty of people in The US Government who think this way. Ted Cruz is another one, who was also interviewed, also disastrously, by Tucker.
Where this, the Cruz interview, and the general discourse around Israel is heading is: what is Israel, exactly? Why does the US support them so much? What was the Iraq war, actually? If we are really using The Bible to dictate foreign policy, then what implications does that have? (I don't think the bible at all supports Huckabee's idea here, btw. I think this is Zionists essentially preying on a very specific type of protestant)
I'm surprised that even the strawman doesn’t invoke eschatology here.
The strawman drawn here is actually kind. The Strawman of a Christian Zionist is something like:
The Jews must regain control of Israel as a prerequisite of the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. We wish well to Israel as a nation for this reason, but this will ultimately not go well for the Jews in Israel: 144,000 will convert to Christianity last minute beating the buzzer, the rest will be damned to eternal hellfire.
I do agree that all positions of biblical Christian zionism are bad, ignorant, and evil.
A quibble, the 144,000 would be proselytizing, they're the beginning of the conversion not the end.
I've never heard it that way, but I'm sure the prots have different versions of everything. The way I've generally heard it is that they're all going down except for the 144,000 who are saved.
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