JOHN RILEY

PGM_20261113.mp3 This is the Middle East report, your connection to truthful reporting on Israel and The Middle East. I'm John Reilly. Each week, we bring you the truth of what's happening on the ground in Israel and The Middle East because there's a lot of deception out there in the news media, social media, podcasters out there, all trying to deceive you on what's actually happening in Israel and in The Middle East. And we break through all those lies and deceptions each week here on the Middle East report. Thank you for listening. Well, on today's show, I am so happy to bring you an interview that I did in Israel with ambassador Mike Huckabee. He is doing an awesome job for The United States as ambassador to Israel. It was just such a delight to be there in his office there in Jerusalem. So I'm gonna bring you that interview here in just a moment. I wanna encourage you to reach out to me here on the Middle East report. I'd love to hear from you. I've got an email address. And if you have any questions or comments about the show, I would love that. You can email me, [email protected]. That's [email protected]. Send me an email. Let me know that you're listening. Well, this interview that I did with ambassador Mike Huckabee was absolutely amazing, not because of me, of course, but because of the things that the ambassador shared, especially when it comes to, you know, the idea of why do we see so much Jew hatred here in The United States and around the world. And I just wanna encourage you, listen to this, interview with ambassador Mike Huckabee directly from Israel, from the capital city, and I think you're gonna find a lot of great content and a lot of answers to some questions that maybe you've been asking. We're in the capital city of Israel in Jerusalem. I'm right here in the office of ambassador Mike Huckabee, ambassador to Israel, United States ambassador. And, Mike, what a joy it is to be right here in, this beautiful embassy. This is my first time.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

I'm glad you're here. It's your embassy. You helped pay for it, so welcome home. I always remind our team. I say, you know, remember who the boss is. And it's not the guy in the corner office over here. It's any American citizen, whether they live here or live in The US, those are our bosses. And so we always have to try to treat our bosses well.

JOHN RILEY

Well, I remember when, president Trump was, you know, in the first term with with this beautiful embassy and then building it for a very low price, just saving money like he does, and it's absolutely gorgeous.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

You know, it was, the consulate for a long time, and he reconfigured it, and they did it for an amazingly low amount of money and an unbelievably quick amount of time. If you know anything about construction in Jerusalem, it's complicated, very complicated because of all of the antiquities and there's so many things, and Israel has its own share of bureaucracy, so they rival The United States and at times exceed The US in government bureaucracy. So for the fact that this could happen in a short period of time was in itself a miracle. I was here on the day in 2018 when the dedication happened. It was a surreal experience to be here after all the years of hoping and praying that we would move our embassy to the indigenous and everlasting capital of the Jewish state. And president Trump in his first term did it. I have a quick story about talking to him over that because my daughter was working at the White House at the time. I was up seeing her. He heard I was in the building. He said, come in, Mike. Let's visit. We did. And we were talking, and it was right after he had made the announcement that he was going to move the embassy. I knew that every person around him had told him not to do it. Every world leader from Europe to Asia to The Middle East begged him not to move the embassy. It'll blow the world up. People in his cabinet, Rex Tillerson who was secretary of state, James Mattis who was secretary of defense, all told him don't do it. He did it anyway. And I said, why did you do it? Every run around you begged you not to. I'll never forget his answer. He said, because I said I would, and it's the right thing to do. And I thought, what an amazing display of real leadership. He didn't sit around and say, well, on one hand, these were the factors. On the other hand, he has said he was gonna do it. He made the promise, and he believed it was the right thing to do. And the world didn't blow up. In fact, here we are. It's exactly where our embassy should be, and it's been a a great move. It... It's here not just for a symbolic purpose, which certainly that's important. This is where the embassy should be because the seat of government in Israel is in Jerusalem. So if my job as ambassador is to interact with all the various ministries of the government of Israel, why in the world would I be two hours away in Tel Aviv? Now, it's not very far distance, but because of traffic, it can be two hours each way. Well, I'd be wasting most of my time sitting in a car. Now I just waste part of my time in the Jerusalem traffic.

JOHN RILEY

Yeah. I know a little something about the Jerusalem traffic, but we won't go there on this interview. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, we're so grateful for your service. I have heard from so many people back in The United States about how grateful they are to have you in this particular position. But beyond that, I have just heard from dozens and dozens of Israelis who have expressed deep appreciation for what you're doing here and the amazing job of representing The United States, to Israel.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

Well, I'm grateful for hearing that. I've been very well received here in Israel by the Israeli people. I was a little concerned that not being Jewish, the president sending me to represent The United States and Israel, would there be backlash from the Jewish world, both in The US and here in Israel? It has been the opposite. There has been nothing but warmth and hospitality in every respect. I think people have told me repeatedly, we're glad you're not Jewish because if you were Jewish, anything you said that was a... Yeah. Well, yeah, he's okay, but he's he's part of the tribe, so it doesn't really mean anything. What I say comes from fifty three and a half years of coming here. First, from 1973 bringing thousands of people here in groups since 1981. It's firsthand experience. The frame of reference is not that I read a book or heard a lecture. It's the lived experience of having been here so many times.

JOHN RILEY

Well, we're gonna start off with the easy stuff here, in this interview, ambassador Huckabee. Before we get into the hard stuff, you know, what's going on here in The Middle East, what has been your greatest joy for you as ambassador? Maybe just one thing, and then maybe, you know, one of the greatest challenges that you've had here as ambassador. I mean, understanding the fact that this is the only job that you'd have accepted from the Trump administration to come here. So beyond that, maybe your your greatest joy and greatest challenge

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

Yeah. I think it's it's it's pretty easy to say the greatest joy. That was the day the hostages all were released. I'll never forget it because every day from the moment I got here, I was wearing a yellow ribbon on my lapel, and it was being worn by almost everyone in the entire country. It was a reminder that we had hostages, and we had Americans who were hostage. People forget that there were 46 people who were Americans killed on October 7 and 18 hostages taken. I wore that as a reminder that we had people that were being starved, beaten, raped, deprived, in some cases murdered while being held hostage by Hamas. And I said, I long for the day when I can take that pin off and get rid of it. That means they've all come home. And the day that happened, it was one of the most emotional and extraordinary moments that I have ever lived. I I compare it to the, moon landing when Neil Armstrong touched his feet, to the Challenger explosion, to the Kennedy assassination because I'm old enough to have lived through that, those historic moments. And I always said that when that day comes, I'm gonna take that ribbon off, and I'm not gonna keep that pen as a reminder because I don't wanna be reminded. I don't ever wanna think about it again, and I'll destroy the pen, that's what I did because I said, this is not a memento. This is not something that I keep as a souvenir, and that was the greatest day. Maybe the hardest thing of dealing with is, the challenges of dealing with almost a stalemate in the Palestinian authority. I would love for there to be a pathway to some level of peaceful coexistence. I'm not sure that there's any time in my lifetime we're gonna see a Palestinian state. I'm not sure it's practical, but that's a policy decision I won't make. Others will make it. I will carry out whatever the policy is if it happens while I'm here. But there would be a great advantage if the Palestinian authority would stop paying terrorists for murdering Jews, which they do. They continue to do it. They say they've stopped, but they haven't. And that's very detrimental because it gives people an incentive to grow up with a level of hate and aspiration to kill Jews. And there are textbooks, which could be changed and should be, but they still teach even children as young as five and six years old that their greatest ambition in life should be to grow up and to take the life of of a Jew.

JOHN RILEY

What do you think is stopping them from doing what you you wish that they would do? You know, you just described all these things. What's what's stopping them, ambassador?

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

Bitterness. Deep, deep bitterness. And it's, it's tragic because there have been so many opportunities even since 1948. I mean, there was a period of time between 1948 and 1967 when all of Judea And Samaria and East Jerusalem was under the complete control of Jordan. If there had been an ambition and a desire to create a Palestinian state, they had twenty years to do it. They could have created a complete Palestinian state. They didn't. Why? Because there was never a Palestinian government, people, or ethnicity. It was created by Yasser Arafat in 1964 when he created the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Prior to that, the term Palestinian was a geographical term. Jews were Palestinians. They weren't Palestinians because there was an ethnicity, they were Palestinians because they lived in the land that was called the British Mandate or Palestine, goes back to the very first century when the Romans used it as a really derogatory term from the Philistines, that's where the word comes from, and for all these many centuries, it was a term that meant the geographical land of the Bible. That's what it meant. Arafat co opted the term, created this idea that there was a... An aggrieved people, the Palestinians, and then over a period of time, there was still no desire to create a state. The Palestinian authority, Palestinian Liberation Organization was created to destroy Israel, not to create a Palestinian state. And the idea of a Palestinian state, that really did not surface until after 1967 when Israel was able to take the big part of Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem.

JOHN RILEY

Ambassador, we have just witnessed a political earthquake in the in The United States. We... We've seen what's happened. There's a lot of Democrats on the left, radicals, and and and many who were elected as well. And now it seems like even some in the Republican party who are calling for a decrease of support for Israel. A lot of people that I talked to in The United States are very, very concerned about this. Bible believing people who who love the Jewish people, love the land of Israel. So what I want you to do is I want you to help separate the facts, you know, from the fake media, the facts from the fiction. You know, should we be concerned that the cooperation that we have with Israel is on the line? And and, of course, Israel being our greatest ally that we have here in this this part of the world.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

It's the only reliable ally that we have. It's really more than an ally. It's a partner. Israel is the only country whose enemies are the same as ours. It's a country that is proven that they're willing to fight with us against our common enemy, a nuclearized Iran that has told us for forty seven and a half years they're gonna kill us. And they've done a pretty good job of killing thousands of Americans through their direct avenues as well as through the proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis. Americans seem to be oblivious to this. And a lot of younger Americans weren't even alive in 1979 when the Ayatollahs took over Iran, when they stormed our embassy in Tehran, and they took 51 American diplomats hostage from the American embassy. They blindfolded them, marched them across the embassy grounds, and held them hostage for four hundred and forty four days. It was a humiliating moment for The United States. Humiliating. And it was also a moment at which we first really understood their intention, which was death to Israel, death to America. I wish Americans recognize that Iran is not Israel's problem. It is America's challenge. I also wish they understood that Israel is a true partner. We're not bailing Israel out. We're not supporting them financially. There has been a long standing memorandum of understanding that has, provided Israel certain funds, but here's what happens with that funding. It is immediately spent and many times over in America to purchase the defense mechanism that the Israelis used to keep themselves from being annihilated. I'll give you a couple of very good examples that are close to home for me. A lot of the Israeli missile defense systems, Iron Dome, David Sling, Arrow three, the components and sometimes the full missile defense. A lot of those are built in Camden, Arkansas, my home state. There are 4,000 people who are employed in a little town of 12,000 people from there and their surrounding area who make these things that are shipped back to Israel that quite frankly have kept me safe through five wars in less than two years of being here. I'm glad that my friends and fellow Arkansans are being able to be employed with very good jobs, but I'm even more grateful for what they're building because it protects 700,000 Americans who live in Israel. Every round of ammunition that the IDF shoots is made just outside of Little Rock by Sig Sauer. There aren't many Arkansans who know that, much less Americans. The billions of dollars that the Israeli spend on buying f 30 fives from Lockheed Martin are buying Boeing f sixteens and f six fifteens or buying the Apache helicopters from Boeing. How many American jobs are created because Israel trust American military equipment and purchases it? But there are other things we get. We get intelligence sharing that is unbelievably important to us. There are Americans alive today who would have been assassinated by Iranian terror cells had it not been for the shared intelligence that the Israeli Mossad and our CIA were able to collaborate on.

JOHN RILEY

Why do you think the radical left, many Democrats are are are so are so filled with Jew hatred or anti Israel or just wanna see this country fail. I don't know. However you wanna put it, what in the world is behind it? Because you know what's happening in The United States. We we we see this all the time and especially with this election and those who were elected, etcetera.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

It is Jew hate. I don't even use the term antisemitism for the most part anymore because I think people are numb to it. They don't understand it. It sounds like a nebulous term. So what is antisemitism? It's when you just hate Jews for an irrational reason. I don't think that this is so much a geopolitical issue as it is a spiritual one, and I feel so many times we miss that. We don't wanna say it out loud. We say the quiet thing, but we need to say it out loud. Why is it that people would have this irrational hatred toward Jews? Jews represent 0.02% of the world's populations. In the entire planet, there are 16,000,000 Jews. Half of them, 8,000,000 live in Israel. I used to say the other half live in New York, but they've all moved to Boca Raton and, Palm Beach now, so getting out of Mondami's New York. The other 8,000,000 live scattered around the world, but think about that. 16,000,000 in the whole world. Are they really a threat to everything holy, special, and divine? I don't think so. That would be absurd. If there is a culture that has developed that says, I wanna be my own God. I don't want some God telling me what to do. If I wanna believe there's a 127 genders, I don't want a God telling me there's only two. If I wanna believe that marriage is not forever, that I can come in and go out of one regularly at will, I don't want some God telling me that it's for life. I don't want a God telling me that it's wrong to lie, to steal, to kill, and that I can only have one God, I can't have a bunch of them. So if I'm gonna live a life that embraces that which is completely self centered, and I become my own God, I'm gonna live as the Bible says in the time of the judges when everyone did what was right in his own eyes, then I have to reject not just the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but I've got to reject the people who keep saying to me that there's only one God, and that he is the creator of the universe, and that he believes that every individual soul has intrinsic worth and value, and has a divine purpose. Well, if I don't wanna believe that, let me blame the people who keep telling me that. Who would that be? It would be the Jews and ultimately the Christians as well. So it is a Judeo Christian foundation that is the essence of Western civilization. That's what people are rejecting. When you hear people screaming in the streets from the river to the sea, do they even know what river, what sea? No. They haven't a clue. What they really are asking for is they're asking that they can be their own gods. I'll tell you how it surfaces in a very practical way. If I'm speaking to a group of students on a college campus, at the question answer time, inevitably, every question begins with the student saying, well, let me tell you what I think. Well, here's what I believe and my favorite. Well, let me share what I feel. And it's all about what I think, what I believe, what I feel. I'm thinking, okay, you're 18 years old and somehow you want the world to adapt to your feelings, to your thoughts, to your beliefs. Why would we do that? Do you really think that you have an authority built in your life that we can trust that we would tune our lives to you? How absurd. That's where we are. So Jew hatred comes from the idea that if we wanna be our own gods, let's be mad at the people who tell us that we can't be our own gods because there's only one and it's not us. That would be starting with the Jews.

JOHN RILEY

We in The United States in so many different ways have drifted away from the word of God. We're not studying the word of God. And then that goes even deeper when you get into the younger age demo in The United States. I mean, how how important is that for us to get right back to understanding the plans and purposes for Israel, the Jewish people, and the entire word of God? And and just actually getting back to the Bible in our country. Does that play a part into what you're talking about?

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

I think it more than plays a part. I think it's whether or not we survive. I'm a musician. I started playing music at age 11. I learned very quickly that before you can play a piece of music, there's a prerequisite that you must do, and it's simple. You tune your instrument. But what do you tune it to? Do you tune it to what you think, feel, or believe? Of course not. You don't tune it to something that is itself off tune. You tune it to a standard that is rigid, fixed, and it is the same wherever you go. I would say it this way, the sound of a d note on the guitar is exactly the same in Tupelo as it is in Tokyo. It doesn't matter where you are, if you tune your instrument, you tune it to a standard that is never changing, that is rigid. If we have a culture that tunes itself to something that is fixed, rigid, but correct, which is the word of God, then we have a culture that can survive and one that has purpose, meaning, and grounded. But if we tune our culture, if we tune our worldview to think, feel, believe, then we're tuning to something that is faulty on its on its face, and there's no way that it will ever make music. It will be a train wreck and sound like noise. If you look around our culture, does it not look more like noise than it does music? You see people screaming, yelling in the streets, burning their communities down, and rioting, and looting places. What does that look like? That's not music. That's chaos. Where does chaos come from? Everyone tuning to his or her own standard of what one believes to be right.

JOHN RILEY

So a follow-up to that, we we know we'd have to get back to the word of God. What else would you say to people who are listening and they're hearing all the stuff that we're talking about happening all over the world in The United States? What other practical things can we do to fight against all of this?

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

I I wish that more pulpits would have bold, courageous voices. I fear that there are many pastors who are afraid of their own congregations. They're afraid to speak about Israel and the Jewish people and the foundation of our Christian faith being Judaism because they're afraid it'll be viewed as political. They don't wanna be seen as doing a political thing. These are the same pastors that were afraid to speak about the sanctity of life or institution of marriage. Why? Because they don't wanna they don't wanna upset anyone. Well, if I'm gonna upset somebody, I'd rather upset somebody who may be living outside of the norm than to upset God who told me what the standards are. That's a concern. I worry about biblical illiteracy on the part of younger believers. There are a lot of, young Christians growing up in evangelical homes where the parents say, we believe the Bible. We go to a Bible believing church. But if their kids go to a secular university that teaches them that there really isn't a God, there's nothing but oppression, that America is a horrible place, what are they gonna come out thinking and believing? They're gonna be out on the streets yelling from the river to the sea, and they won't have a clue what they're even yelling about. That really concerns me, and then we've got to do a better job of helping people come to objective facts that are based on something that is far bigger than what we feel.

JOHN RILEY

Considering everything that we talked about, give us something positive here, you know, in the midst of all of this that we can hold on to because you hear about all these things and you can say that's that's pretty dark. But give us a little shot in the arm with, something that's positive, and then we're

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

gonna be wrapping this up. First of all, I'd say that I see miracles here every day. I tell people all the time, if you if you don't believe in miracles, I think it takes more faith to not believe that God's hand is on this land than it does just to look around and see what happens every day and say there's no other explanation. I'll give you a couple of very concrete examples. I've been here less than two years. I've been through five wars. We could be headed toward another one. We don't know. But here's what shouldn't be happening. The Israeli economy will have a GDP growth this year of seven and a half percent. It was originally estimated that it'd be four and a half. The US or virtually any country on earth would be delighted if it had a 3% GDP growth. That would be phenomenal. They're gonna have a seven and a half after all of these extraordinary challenges they face. The stock market since October 7 in Israel is up a 100%. The per capita income in Israel is $70,000 compared to Jordan, $4,500, less than that in Egypt. You take a look at that and you think how is it possible? That's not how it's supposed to work when you're having to spend billions of shekels defending yourself from being annihilated. People can say, they're just really good at finance, they're good at entrepreneurialism, but I would also say they're good at ultimately understanding thirty eight hundred years ago, God gave them this land and it is the fulfillment of everything that the scriptures taught us. So that's the good news.

JOHN RILEY

That is some great news, to take away from this time that we've had together, ambassador. And, something else that people may not know as we kinda end this conversation is that you did bring some musical instruments with you to

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

Israel.

JOHN RILEY

I wanted to I wanted to end up on that because you love playing the, you know, the

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

Bass guitar.

JOHN RILEY

Bass guitar and all that. But tell us about that. I mean, you you... You've actually brought them with you.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

Yeah. I brought, four guitars with me. Well, I guess I say I brought three and I acquired one. And I had one that was already here that I've kept for years in Israel because I would bring groups and I would have it and just kept it here easier than hauling it back and forth. But I play bass guitar in my church praise band every Sunday. You know, we go... People almost don't understand. Yeah, there are churches in Israel, all over Israel. The Christian population in Israel has grown from 34,000 in 1948 to 200,000 today. Now, it's not a big huge part of the population. It's an amazing place because there is freedom of religion here. I can be Christian very freely. I'm protected by the Israeli government to practice my faith to go to any Christian holy site I wish to go to. Our church is respected. You know, it's not a big deal that not only did my wife and I go to church, but that I can play in the praise band and, you know, just be a guy church every Sunday.

JOHN RILEY

Ambassador Mike Huckabee playing his bass in a praise band here in the capital city of Israel in Jerusalem. You heard it first here on the Middle East report. Maybe not here first. You probably shared that with other people. Thank you so much for everything that, you are doing here in this country to represent The United States. All of your work. You're you're dearly loved by so many with, what you are doing, and we're... And I'm just grateful that I've had a few moments to talk to you right here in your office. Thank you.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE

Great to have you here. Welcome anytime.

JOHN RILEY

Thanks for listening to the Middle East Report. I would love to hear from you. Send me an email. Let me know that you're listening. [email protected]. [email protected]. And you can get this podcast wherever you get your podcast. You can go to a f r dot net or any of the podcast channels out there. Thanks for listening.