Morning Note

US Ambassador Mike Huckabee has poured gasoline on a region already in flames. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, he invoked Genesis 15 to argue that modern Israel is entitled to territory stretching “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” When Carlson pressed Huckabee about the implications—asking, “does Israel have a right to that land”—Huckabee clearly responded, “it would be fine if they took it all.”

Huckabee’s remarks are despicable. They come at a time when true diplomacy calls for peace, restraint, and dialogue. If the US were truly a government of peace, it would have immediately repudiated Huckabee’s remarks, because they are widely condemned as inconsistent with international law and the UN Charter, and as a threat to regional stability and peace.

Europe learned, at terrible and prolonged cost, what happens when Scripture is wielded as a weapon during the Catholic and Protestant wars. Each side read the Bible in its own irreconcilable way and declared God to be on its side. The result was devastation and bloodshed that scarred the continent in the 16th and 17th centuries. Out of that catastrophe emerged a hard-won political wisdom, that sacred texts are not to be invoked as title deeds for conquest.

That lesson alone should be enough to rebuke Huckabee. For him to claim that Israel possesses a divine right to conquer the Middle East because of promises recorded in Genesis is to revive the most dangerous habits of religious warfare.

But there is something more. Huckabee’s Christian Zionist theology, and the hyper-militant Jewish nationalism advanced by Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Benjamin Netanyahu, fail even on theological terms. Ambassador Huckabee’s remarks highlight two deep and basic theological misunderstandings on the part of the militant Zionists.

First, Huckabee misconstrues the biblical tradition he purports to uphold, turning the Bible’s message of justice and mercy into a license for hatred. Second, he confuses two entirely different concepts, Zionism and Judaism, the former a modern political ideology and the latter an ancient religious faith and way of life.

Genesis records God’s covenant “To your descendants I have given this land—from the river of Egypt to the great River Euphrates”, but that covenant was not a blank check as Huckabee believes. The Bible is explicit that possession of the promised land is conditional. The promised land was entrusted to the Israelites conditional upon their righteousness.

As spoken by Prophet Micah 6:8, “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Leviticus 26:33 warns that if Israel disobeys God’s commandments, “You, however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste.” Deuteronomy 28:63 warns that if Israel disobeys God’s laws, “the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it.” When the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah violate God’s justice, the prophets repeatedly foretell exile. Jeremiah 25:11 delivers one such prophecy, telling the people that “This whole land will be a desolation and a horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.”

To be chosen by God was therefore to be morally accountable to God. To be accountable was to suffer exile as the cost of injustice. In the rabbinic tradition, there was no call on Jews to return to the Holy Land following the exile by the Romans. Instead, there was the overriding command to be moral, to fulfill God’s commands, wherever Jews happened to live. The ultimate return to the promised land would come from God, not from a nationalist movement.

The Prophet Jeremiah 7:4-7 makes clear that the Israelite ownership of the land depends wholly on justice: “Do not trust in deceptive words and say, ‘This is the temple of the Lord’…if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place… then I will let you live in this place.” That is the true covenant, not a parcel of land.

Today’s radical and violent Zionists, boasting of Israel’s military might, turn to the Book of Joshua, which describes the ancient Israelite settlement of the promised land after their deliverance from Egypt. The narrative depicts God as commanding the Israelites to destroy the nations living in the land to make room for the Israelites.

Generations of later rabbis made perfectly clear in their commentaries that such violence has no place in contemporary Jewish life. Moreover, many archaeologists and historians argue that the conquest narrative in Joshua is not a straightforward historical record, and that Israel’s emergence in the highlands was largely gradual, with the biblical account reflecting later theological and political aims. Many scholars place Joshua within the Deuteronomistic History, with major layers often dated to the late monarchic (Josianic) period and the Babylonian Exile. To convert that text into a blueprint for modern Israel’s violence against the Palestinians and conquests in neighboring countries is antithetical to actual Jewish history and the ethics of rabbinic Judaism.

Huckabee and today’s Jewish nationalist extremists utterly conflate Zionism and Judaism. Readers of the brilliant scholar Yakov Rabkin will understand this profound conceptual error. Political Zionism emerged as a European secular nationalist movement. Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat (1896) was a political program born of late 19th century European nationalism (not Jewish religion). Early Zionist leaders were mostly secular and socialist.

Rabbinic Judaism, by contrast, is a two-millennia-old civilization of law, liturgy, and moral reasoning, and many leading rabbinic authorities were resistant to political Zionism. Rabbis in the early 20th century warned that Zionism would become a form of idolatry of the land itself. For these rabbis, the return to Zion should await the Messiah, and in the meantime, Jews everywhere should follow the moral law.

To invoke God to justify Israel’s wars on Palestine and neighboring countries commits what the sages called chillul Hashem, the desecration of the Holy Name. The Prophet Ezekiel 36:20 speaks directly to this point. When Israel acted unjustly among the nations, “they profaned my holy name.” God’s name is desecrated not when Israel is criticized, but when injustice by Israel is carried out under God’s banner.

For Christians like Huckabee, the contradiction between Zionist militarism and Jesus’s teaching is sharper still. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declares, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9). When Peter draws the sword, Jesus commands, “Put your sword back… for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Invoking the Bible to sanctify Israel’s conquests is not an act of faithfulness but a denial of the very heart of Jesus’ teaching.

What do Huckabee’s misunderstandings mean for us today?

The Bible is not a license for Israel’s wars and territorial expansion. Peace must be based on law and justice, with two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.

The United States should not only repudiate Huckabee’s remarks but should also immediately recognize the State of Palestine alongside Israel, with mutual security guarantees. The Arab world should finally unite diplomatically, rather than being bullied by the US and Israel. Until there is a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel, the Arab governments should end the Abraham Accords, quit Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace,” demand the removal of US bases that in fact endanger them rather than protect them, and reject any new US-Israeli war on Iran that threatens to devastate the region.

There is nothing utopian about any of this. It is the utterly practical path to peace and is entirely in the US national interest. The urgent task for Huckabee and other religious Zionists is to rediscover the Bible’s true message, which calls for peace, justice for the stranger, protection of the vulnerable, and humility before God.

Jeffrey Sachs is University Professor at Columbia University. Sybil Fares is senior advisor to the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the Middle East and Africa.