Last February, public opinion the world over, but especially in Egypt and the Middle East was shocked at an irresponsible statement made by US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee in an interview with US political activist and commentator Tucker Carlson. Mr Huckabee said that it was fine for Israel to take control of the entire Middle East from the Nile to Euphrates in accordance with the covenant between God and the Jewish people as cited in the Book of Genesis.
Mr Huckabee’s statement sparked widespread controversy and provoked strong response that called for an official apology from the United States, as well as the removal of Mr Huckabee from the post of ambassador to Israel. Critics argued that his remarks exceeded his official duties and contradicted his country’s declared position opposing Israeli occupation and expansion. The statement was also described as a flagrant violation of international law and the United Nations Charter, and as posing a serious threat to regional security and stability. In this regard, a joint statement strongly condemning Mr Huckabee’s declaration was issued by Egypt and 14 Arab and Islamic countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Oman and Bahrain, in addition to the General Secretariat of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the League of Arab States and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
Even so, the US remained silent; neither its President nor its Secretary of State offered any comment to address or rectify the damage caused by an official representative’s irresponsible declaration. Nor was there any decision to dismiss Mr Huckabee from his post for violating diplomatic, official, and political norms by inappropriately expressing a personal opinion while speaking as his country’s ambassador, a position that obliges him to represent its policies.
In this context, the 25 February episode of Judge Andrew Napolitano’s podcast Judging Freedom sounded the opinion of his guest American political and economic expert, and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs on the incident. Following are the main highlights of Professor Sachs’s opinion on the matter:
“This man [Huckabee] should resign immediately, or he should be removed from his position immediately. An invitation to Israel to have open war in the Middle East based on a misreading of the Bible, a very profound misreading of the Bible… You don’t take a selective line in the Bible as the basis for war… The fact of the matter is that because of the Zionist lobby, I’m sure there were pats on the back in the White House, but it’s grotesque and it is a reflection of all that is wrong with American policy.
“A second point I’d like to make is that Huckabee’s version of the Bible is so profoundly immature and ignorant, it is shocking. The whole biblical narrative is not a deed to land from God to the Israeli people. Whatever Huckabee thinks it is, what’s called a covenant, which is an agreement, you are chosen not in the sense that I’m giving you a gift, but you have a responsibility to moral behaviour. And the promise in the Bible, I’m talking in theological terms, is not that this is your land. The land is my land, God would make clear, but it is entrusted to you based on your righteous behaviour. That’s what the covenant is. That’s the whole story of the Bible. And you can listen to prophet after prophet after prophet who explain to the Israelites, you’re going to lose the land. You’re going to, in fact, it says in in Leviticus, if the people are not just and moral, the land will vomit them out [Leviticus 18: 28]… This is a deal if you want to put it that way, it’s a covenant, this is not a unilateral promise that you do what you want.
“Now Israel is not behaving justly or morally or according to God’s laws. Israel is committing mass murder. It’s committing slaughter in its country. It is completely iniquitous against the Palestinian people and against others in the region… So Huckabee, I don’t know where he gets this, but the trivialisation that he makes of the Bible just in purely theological terms is shocking to me, how ignorant he is about what the Bible really says… It’s the opposite of what Jesus teaches, completely completely the opposite of what Jesus teaches: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’. And he tells Peter, ‘Put away the sword, those who live by the sword die by the sword’. Come on. This is the opposite of Jesus’s teachings. A man like Huckabee should know this.
“The whole point about modern Zionism, it was not rabbinic Judaism, the rabbis said: ‘No, this isn’t what Judaism is about. Judaism is about morality, is about following God’s law. It’s not about idolatry of the land’… And if Israel had in its politics any sense of morality and any sense of covenant, it would say that the 8 million Palestinian people have their rights to self-determination, and we will live peacefully next door to them. That’s the basis of justice and that’s what’s missing right now from Israeli politics.”
Watani International
6 March 2026
