Opinion Editorials, December 2010

US Politics:

Mike Huckabee, the Pseudo-Moralist

By Khalid Amayreh

Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, December 13, 2010

 
The bottom-line: you can't be a man or woman of honesty and true morality and at the same time support Israeli terror and genocidal policies. The two are simply an obscene oxymoron

Former Governor of Arkansas and Fox News host Mike Huckabee serves as a classical example of an American politician who is willing to sacrifice conscience, honesty and moral integrity in order to receive a certificate of good conduct from Israel and its powerful lobby in Washington.
 
He claims, or would want us to believe, that he is an ethical man who follows true Christian values. However, a closer scrutiny of the former presidential hopeful would reveal a confused man who really evades and ignores the hard and harsh issues that expose the utter depravity and  brutal ugliness of the Jewish state.
 
This is evident from his enthusiastic embrace of Israel's markedly criminal policies in Occupied Palestine, policies that stand in stark contradiction to everything and anything that Jesus Christ preached and taught. 
 
In the final analysis, we are talking about a man who combines  false religious zeal with willful ignorance, fanaticism and not a small amount of vindictiveness in forming his positions and views with regard to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
 
Huckabee is often carried away by the atmospherics of the moment, saying things that are plainly  mendacious in order to please and appease his  fanatical fans and bank-rollers.
 
 However, in doing so, he betrays, knowingly or unknowingly, every moral value he claims to espouse and hold aloft.
 
In a recent speech he gave in New York City,  Huckabee sought to curry favor with fanatical Zionist supremacists who were holding a Huckabee  reception in order to raise funds for stealing more Palestinian lands and homes and terrorizing and dispossessing more innocent people in the West Bank.
 
His very attendance and participation in this most immoral event caricatured a politician who just goes with the flow, regardless of the oppression, suffering and pain  America's immoral policies are inflicting on innocent victims several thousand miles away.
 
"This evening is about the lights," said Huckabee. "The lights that I hope will burn brightly, because they are not just about the Jewish people, but about all people who love freedom and who believe that every single human life matters and has worth and value and should be never devalued by the hate of other government, religion or madman and denigrated into oblivion."
 
Needless to say, and given the ideology and mindset of his audience, Huckabee should have condemned outright  the systematic and unrelenting  oppression meted  out by Israel to millions of Palestinian Muslims and Christians whose only "crime" is their being not part of the "holy tribe."
 
It is never sufficient  for  a true Christian to pay lib service to freedom. He or she should also denounce in the strongest terms  relentless  efforts by the Israeli government to deny Palestinians their  God-given freedom and narrow their horizons in order to force them to emigrate so that others would take over their homes and property.
 
Huckabee should have told his fanatical audience that the crimes  Israel is committing  in Occupied Palestine on a daily basis  were totally incompatible with the universal values of justice and equity.   
 
True Christians, of all people, should not flinch from calling a spade a spade, even if doing  so would  make many people upset. A true Christian, and Huckabee claims to be one, must not seek to please and appease power at the expense of morality. 
 
After all,  Jesus would have never sided with  the oppressors  against the oppressed, the rich against the poor and the strong against the weak. Similarly, Jesus would have never condoned  the  acts of savagery, hate, and persecution with which Israel is tormenting the Palestinian people.
 
 If so, why do those who claim to be followers of Christ play deaf and dumb and look the other way whenever Israel is criticized for its manifestly evil behavior, which happen to be antithetical to every imaginable Christian ideal and virtue.
 
In the final analysis, it is a sign of hypocrisy  and moral duplicity to invoke higher moral principles about  freedom and equality of men while constantly helping  effect and expedite policies that  seriously undermine both.
 
Huckabee and similar hypocrites ought to realize that all the standing ovations in the world don't warrant harming a child, who is made to suffer because Israeli bulldozers, driven by nefarious young  soldiers, came and destroyed his home while he was at school.
 
On the Day of Judgment, this child and the tens of thousands of other victims of Israeli oppression will point an accusing finger toward the likes of Huckabee who helped Israel carry out her evil acts against helpless Palestinians. Then there will be no Fox News to spin the facts and turn the big lie into a "truth" glorified by the ignorant rabbles.
 
Unfortunately, conscience and the American political discourse don't usually go hand in hand.
 
Huckabee readily condemns the Palestinians' refusal to recognize Israel (this is a mendacious observation because the Palestinian Authority recognized Israel as part of the Oslo Agreement).  But he says nothing and remains silent about Israel's refusal to recognize Palestine. So where is the moral consistency, Mr.  Huckabee?
 
Grass root work
 
If Huckabee is truly serious about justice and morality, he should first challenge and denounce the manifestly fascist and criminal  policies and practices of the  Israel  government.
 
He should declare that Israel should immediately stop all the persecution and oppression meted out to the Palestinian people. He should say "No" to the unmitigated ethnic cleansing of Christians and Muslims in East Jerusalem,  including  the banishing of citizens because of their political views.
 
He should at  the very least denounce recent Jewish edicts that non-Jews, including  Christians,  are infra-humans, or de facto  animals,  whose lives have no sanctity.
 
He should strongly condemn the racist views of many rabbis in Israel who openly teach that God created Gentiles to be merely water  carriers and wood hewers for the master race.
 
He should condemn the acts of savagery and criminality meted out to Christians and Muslims in occupied Palestine at the hands of  murderous settlers who think of themselves as God's representatives on earth.
 
I am sure that Huckabee would unhesitatingly condemn any discriminatory acts against Jews in any American city.
 
But why does he not utter even a word in  protest  against discriminatory acts against Muslims and Christians in Israel like the recent edict by dozens of rabbis who ruled that it is forbidden to rent property to Palestinian students or Arabs in general.
 
The principles of freedom and justice are universal  and ought to apply to all men and women regardless of race and faith.
 
However, approaching these values selectively by ignoring the immense oppression inflicted on  the Palestinian people at the hands of Huckabee's darling state several thousand miles away does represent the apex of hypocrisy.
 
This is what Huckabee obviously doesn't understand.

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