The BBC Used Mike Huckabee’s Interview to Attempt to Defame Israel

On February 22, the BBC News website published a report by Maia Davies titled “US ambassador’s Israel comments condemned by Arab and Muslim nations.”

The report is made up of three elements, the first of which is a presentation of what that headline calls the “US ambassador’s Israel comments.”

Davies begins by telling BBC audiences that: [emphasis added]

Arab and Muslim governments have condemned remarks made by the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who suggested Israel would be justified in taking over a vast stretch of the Middle East on Biblical grounds.

In an interview with conservative US commentator Tucker Carlson, Huckabee was asked whether Israel had a right to an area which the host said was, according to the Bible, “essentially the entire Middle East”.

The ambassador said “it would be fine if it took it all”. But he added Israel was not seeking to do so, rather it is “asking to at least take the land that they now occupy” and protect its people.

Davies later adds:

In the interview, released on Friday, Carlson pressed the ambassador on his interpretation of a Bible verse which the host claimed suggested Israel had a right to the land between the River Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates in Syria and Iraq.

Huckabee said “it would be a big piece of land” but stressed that “I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today”.

He later added: “They’re not asking to go back to take all of that, but they are asking to at least take the land that they now occupy, they now live in, they now own legitimately, and it is a safe haven for them.”

He also said his earlier remark that Israel could take it “all” had been somewhat “hyperbolic”.

The relevant section of that “interview” can be found here.

BBC audiences were not informed that — as was noted by Lahav Harkov — Carlson put out an edited clip on social media.

The Tucker Carlson Network posted a clip of the video in which Carlson expostulated at length about Genesis 15:18, in which God tells Avram, “to your descendants I will give this land, from the River of Egypt to the great river Euphrates.” The Biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judea never included all of the land promised in Genesis, even at its historically largest size.

Carlson asks if Huckabee believes that Israel was promised to the Jewish people and they therefore have the right to take all of the land promised, which covers modern-day Jordan and parts of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

In the clip, which cuts Huckabee off mid-sentence, he says in a facetious tone of voice, “It would be fine if they took it all.”

The second half of the ambassador’s sentence, as heard in the interview, is: “but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today.”

The second element to Davies’ report is the statement put out by various Arab countries and organizations, which she describes as follows:

Following the interview’s release, the UAE’s foreign ministry released the statement on behalf of various governments and other actors expressing “strong condemnation and profound concern” regarding the comments.

The statement said Huckabee had “indicated that it would be acceptable for Israel to exercise control over territories belonging to Arab states, including the occupied West Bank”.

It said the remarks violated international law and directly contradicted US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza, including efforts to create “a political horizon for a comprehensive settlement that ensures the Palestinian people have their own independent state”.

The statement continued: “The ministries reaffirmed that Israel has no sovereignty whatsoever over the Occupied Palestinian Territory or any other occupied Arab lands.”

“They reiterated their firm rejection of any attempts to annex the West Bank or separate it from the Gaza Strip, their strong opposition to the expansion of settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and their categorical rejection of any threat to the sovereignty of Arab states.”

The statement said it was signed by the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria and the State of Palestine, as well as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Davies makes no effort to clarify to her readers that “the occupied West Bank” has never been included in “territories belonging to Arab states”; that it has never been “Palestinian” in the sense of belonging to a sovereign state; that it was part of the territory allocated to the creation of a Jewish homeland by the League of Nations; or that it was illegally occupied for 19 years by one of the signatories of the statement she promotes: Jordan.

Neither does she bother to point out that Huckabee’s responses to Carlson’s statements and questions concerning the principles underlying Christian Zionism have no bearing on the US “plan to end the war in Gaza.”

The third element of Davies’ report is the provision of supposed context, with readers told that:

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state – during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

Notably, Davies avoids explaining why what she described two paragraphs earlier as “the State of Palestine” is now “a hoped-for future state” and, in line with usual BBC practice, she again avoids the issue of the Jordanian occupation of the areas the corporation chooses to call “the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” as well as the attacks on Israel by Jordan and other Arab countries in June 1967.

Davies continues with the BBC’s usual partial presentation of “international law” together with an interpretation of a non-binding ICJ advisory opinion: “The settlements are illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in 2024.”

Davies’ report closes with a new version of the BBC’s usual “frozen in time” portrayal of casualties resulting from the war that began as a result of the Hamas-led invasion of Israel — this time erasing Israeli casualties and hostages altogether:

Successive Israeli governments have allowed settlements to grow. However, expansion has risen sharply since Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the head of a right-wing, pro-settler coalition, as well as the start of the Gaza war, triggered by Hamas’s deadly 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s subsequent military offensive, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

In addition to failing to provide readers with appropriate historical background, Davies refrained from properly explaining the context to the nine words that prompted the “condemnation” that is the topic of her report, including the fact that discussion of a Biblical passage has no contemporary relevance.

She also avoided providing information about other issues arising from that long conversation or the populist record of the person she describes as a “conservative US commentator.”

Obviously the prime aim of Davies’ reporting on this “much ado about nothing” story was to amplify the statement delegitimizing Israel that was put out by a collection of countries and organizations.

Hadar Sela is the co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.