President Donald Trump nominated former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to be the next US ambassador to the State of Israel. In advance of his senate confirmation interview, the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a letter strongly opposing his confirmation and suggested a few questions for senators to ask Huckabee.
A few Democratic senators picked up CAIR’s line of questions including Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Sen. Chris van Hollen (D-MD).
Huckabee’s responses were mostly diplomatic and said his role would be to carry out the president’s policies, not his own. Therefore, below are more direct responses that I imagine Huckabee and many Christian Zionists would share outside of a public hearing.
The Denial of “Palestinian identity”
CAIR asked senators to get Huckabee to state whether he believed in “Palestinian identity.” In the typical usage of English terms, adding “ian” is a recognition of a country like “Italian” means people from Italy and “Costa Rican” means citizens of Costa Rica. As the United States does not recognize a country called “Palestine,” there is nothing inconsistent with people not using “Palestinians.” Some people call the local Arabs “Stateless Arabs from Palestine” or SAPs for short, or maybe just “Gazans” and “West Bank Arabs.”
In the early 20th century, there were Palestinian Jews and Arabs in the region before nationalism brought new countries into the world. The Palestinian Liberation Organization’s charter attempted to redefine a “Palestinian” as narrowly related to Arabs. The Palestinian Authority crafted a constitution similarly said “Palestine is part of the Arab nation…. The Palestinian people are part of the Arab and Islamic nations.” By its own definitions, Palestinian Arabs refer to themselves as regional Arabs, not necessarily distinct as a “people.” It’s call to be part of “Islamic Nations,” seemingly calls for Islamic Supremacy and ignores historic reality of Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Christians before the creation of nations in the Middle East.
People do not call people today “Constantinoplians” as there is no place called Constantinople today. They certainly wouldn’t insist on using such concoction to only mean a subset of people who lived in that area, such as only Muslims. So it is with “Palestinians.”
Refusal To Use Term “West Bank”
CAIR was upset by Huckabee not using the term “West Bank” and asked senators to ask him about it at the confirmation hearing.
The commonly used term “West Bank” – as well as “East Jerusalem” – are both politicized and dated. For 4,000 years of history, neither term existed. The contours of both were manufactured because on the 1948-9 war initiated by five Arab armies to destroy the nascent State of Israel. The 1949 Armistice Agreement that Israel struck with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan created both entities. Jordan illegally annexed both in an action not recognized by any country other than the United Kingdom and Pakistan. Jordan then launched another attack on Israel in 1967 and lost both territories it had illegally annexed. The United Nations only started to use the term “West Bank” after that war.
The actual historic regions of Judea and Samaria existed for centuries, not 18 years of illegal Jordanian occupation from 1949 to 1967. Judea and Samaria actually have a larger footprint than Jordan’s “West Bank,” so it is also the wrong term to apply. Discussing the region today would be best using “East of the 1949 Armistice Lines” or E49AL.
CAIR’s ongoing use of the short-lived “East Jerusalem” is politicized and dated, and perhaps highlights why it gets triggered by people refusing to use the manufactured “West Bank.”
Refusal to Recognize Israeli “Occupation.”
CAIR (and the UN) believe that Israel “occupies Palestinian land.” This notion has many problems.
First, the occupation narrative is integral to the antisemitic view that Jews are “European settler colonialists.” It is nonsensical, as Jews have 3,700 years of history in the Holy Land. Judaism is a unique religion that has ties to a specific piece of land, the land of Israel. Judaism was designed in the Bible as a small regional tribe, not a global religion like other monotheistic faiths.
Second, when Israel declared itself a state in May 1948 as the British ended their mandate, the entirety of that mandate became Israel. The fact that Jordan seized the eastern part of the country and Egypt took Gaza, only made international recognition of the de facto borders of Israel more narrow. When Israel took those areas back during its 1967 defensive war, it opted to only incorporate eastern Jerusalem and left the other areas as Israeli territories to possibly swap for an enduring peace with its neighbors.
Third, most of the Global North, including Israel and the United States, do not recognize a State of Palestine. It is therefore impossible to occupy “Palestinian land.”
Gaza as “Ancestral Homeland.”
It is puzzling to see CAIR refer to Gazans as being tied to the land for centuries while simultaneously arguing that 80% of Gazans are “1948 refugees” who should move into Israel. If today’s Gazans aren’t really Gazans according to the United Nations and Arab countries, why the uproar in trying to move them out of a war zone which caused thousand of casualties? Why the uproar in trying to move them out of the rubble to rebuild the region which was decimated in a war their leaders started and they supported?
“Right of Return” and “Right To Remain”
CAIR used terms “right of return” and “right to remain” in its letter to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. It attempted to anchor local Arabs everywhere in the land, including in Israel. Simultaneously, CAIR advocates – as does the United Nations per UNSC 2334 – that Jews should be expelled from the “West Bank” / E49AL. This is an extremist Islamic Supremacy agenda and not one based on mutual dignity.
The United States opposition to SAPs “right of return” into Israel enables its vision of two states, one Arab and one Jewish, the opposite of what CAIR claims.
CAIR’s leadership made troubling statements about the Gazan war against Israel and called Jewish groups “enemies” of Muslims. It is distressing that some Democratic senators like Van Hollen and Merkley echoed the group’s questions to Mike Huckabee at his confirmation hearing. Hopefully these responses articulate what was omitted from that session.
Related articles:
CAIR Thinks Protecting Synagogues Is A Political Stunt And Waste Of Taxpayers Money (September 2024)
Hamas, CAIR, DSA, Within Our Lifetime, SJP Are All Gunning For Jews (May 2024)
First One Through 