Israel needs to preserve its dignity
Has Mike Huckabee, who has called attacks on Arabs in Yehudah and Shomron “Jewish terrorism,” thrown Israel under the bus?
The answer to the first question, I believe, is Itamar Ben-Gvir.
No, I don’t think Mr. Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, is the monster many in the media have made him out to be. Yes, he has strong views about Arabs he sees as posing dangers to Jews. And such Arabs, and the dangers they represent, certainly exist.
But he is a politician, too, who, to impress a particular constituency, has done things like boasting of reducing food rations for Palestinian prisoners (and Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in 2025 that the prison service under Ben-Gvir deprived Palestinians of a minimum subsistence diet). And he posted (though later removed) a video of corpulent, smiling Arab prisoners entering prison and then exiting as gaunt, drained creatures.
He has also made statements calibrated, like the video, to inflame. In a more recent one, responding to Israel’s drawdown of military strikes in Gaza, he opined that “targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night.” He added: “Not just those who pose an immediate threat—there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”
Now, arguably, he meant the 30 to 40 deaths to be of Hamas terrorists. And few of us would be disappointed if the earth were no longer cursed with the presence of such murderous people.
But it was entirely predictable that media and nations (not just Arab ones but Western ones as well) would interpret his wished-for victims to include random Arab residents of Gaza. And, equally predictable, that those media and nations, along with countless pundits, would seize upon the “not even people” phrase as mirroring things like the Nazis’ portrayal of Jews.
Such incendiary statements provide potent ammunition to anti-Israel provocateurs like Tucker Carlson and Hassan Piker, who then gleefully feed them into their “genocide” generator. And from there, the libels spread into other parts of the populace.
As to question #2, Mr. Huckabee has been the friendliest and most empathetic US ambassador to Israel that it has ever known. And his condemnation of acts of violence by nationalist hotheads against innocent Arabs is not only justified but also in Israel’s best interest.
He made clear that roughly half a million Israelis live in Yehudah and Shomon, and that the men responsible for “settler violence” represent “a very tiny minority” of that population, at most, “a few hundred men.”
He added that that is “a few hundred too many,” but he clearly rejects the myth that, as BDS supporter Mairav Zonszein put it in a recent New York Times guest column, violence against Arab residents “is a feature, not a bug, of Israeli policy… [which includes] the emboldening of settler militias,” and that the “systematic destruction of Palestinian life” is the government’s goal.
Israeli Jews in outposts in Yehudah and Shomron point out that there have been many more instances of attacks on them by local Arabs than there has been violence against Arabs. And that there have been times when what seemed to be anti-Arab violence turned out to be nothing of the sort (in some cases, even fabrications). All true.
But in the end, those cases do not justify “retaliations” against random Arab families and fields that have inarguably taken place.
Back in May, when an “activist” flotilla was intercepted by the Israeli Navy, Mr. Ben-Gvir posted a video mocking captured flotilliacs bound and forced to kneel on the ground. The posting sparked (as its poster intended) outrage from abroad and even from Prime Minister Netanyahu, who called his minister’s actions “despicable.”
Mr. Huckabee’s reaction at the time was that the “Flotilla was [a] stupid stunt, but Ben Gvir betrayed the dignity of his nation.”
That latter phrase said much. And it still does, today.
At a time when Israel is ridiculously but widely vilified as racist and genocidal, preserving the dignity of the nation is more important than ever. And provocative anti-Arab rhetoric, not to mention violence perpetrated against Arab civilians, promote anything but dignity. ●
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