ZOA Praises Fmr. Pres. Candidate Huckabee’s Position: “Israel Should Not Trade Land For Peace”
News
August 27, 2008

 



No Palestinian state


 

 

 


The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has praised former Arkansas governor and former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee for his statements during his visit to Israel last week, which included, “As an American, I do not feel that the Israelis are obligated or required to give up land in order to bring peace … You do not achieve peace by creating a situation where you cannot defend your borders and therefore protect your citizens. Having a temporary cessation of hostility is not peace if while that cessation of hostility is going on, just across the border, arms are being built up for the purpose of eventually pushing that border down.”


 


Huckabee, while praising President George W. Bush, also dissented on the president’s support for creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel, saying it would be “irrational” from both the perspectives of effective governance and security. If he were an Israeli father tucking his children into bed at night, he said, he would want to know that the country’s borders were well defended. How could that father sleep well “knowing that not that many feet away someone has a rocket pointed at him?” he asked. Huckabee recalled his own fears as a child growing up at the height of the Cold War with communist Cuba only 90 miles from U.S. soil so he could only imagine how much more worse it would feel to have a dangerous country only 90 feet away. Huckabee said his stance on Israel stemmed from common sense and not religious belief (Tovah Lazaroff, ‘Huckabee: Israel shouldn’t swap land,’ Jerusalem Post, August 20, 2008).


 


Huckabee also stated that, “There are many, many places where a homeland for the Palestinians could in fact take place that would be consistent with their roots … But there is only one place on earth where the Jewish people could have a homeland that is consistent with their roots … [Emphasizing that the international community agreed to recognize clear, definitive boundaries of a Jewish homeland in Israel as early as 1919, Huckabee added] We have a moral obligation to the Jewish people to honor the commitment that has been made through decades and decades of understanding that there is going to be a homeland for the Jewish people” (Yishai Fleisher and Elana Eden, ‘Huckabee: “There is Only One Place for a Jewish Homeland,”‘ Israel National News, August 19, 2008).


 


ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We applaud former Governor Huckabee’s principled support for Israel and clear-sighted appreciation of the issues. Instead of the commonplace false even-handedness and false equivalence between Israel and the PA, which confuses the American public as to the fact that the Palestinians and the wider Arab world still unfortunately pursue Israel’s elimination, Mr. Huckabee makes it clear that Israel is not obliged to tear itself to pieces in order to create a Palestinian state and that in fact such a state at this time would prove to be a failed terror state and thus a threat to Israel’s security and existence.


 


“Instead of repeating the conventional wisdom about how such a state would supposedly help bring peace and security, many American Jewish organizations could take a leaf out of Governor Huckabee’s book and stand up for truth and Israel. We urge the presidential contenders, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, to heed and adopt Mr. Huckabee’s argument.”


 

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