(The Jewish Week).Former Arkansas governor and 2008 Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee got a standing ovation when Dr. Joseph Frager introduced him at the 28th annual dinner of American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva Center on Dec. 5.
It was the fifth night of Chanukah, which reminded Huckabee that if he ran with John McCain in 2008 the Republicans would have had a 'McCabee' victory.
“Where we are now is between a Barack and a hard place,” he quipped.
Huckabee denounced the administration’s pressure to freeze settlements:
“A cessation of land development in order to make peace with an adversary that refuses to recognize your right to exist is counter-intuitive, it absolutely makes no sense whatsoever... It seems to me there should be pressure put on the Palestinians, not the Israelis.”
As for those critics of the $3 billion dollars of U.S. aid to Israel, Huckabee said he wants for the people who are not Jewish to recognize why the Jewish people should be safe and secure: “Israel is strategically the most important ally we have in that part of the world. We will stand with Israel.”
Huckabee described an emotional visit 17 years ago. He took his daughter, 11 years old at the time, to Yad Vashem. “Would she comprehend?” he wondered. The girl was so overtaken with emotion, so incredulous at the recorded events of the Holocaust, that she wrote in the guest book, “Why didn’t someone do something?”
“I did not have to ask my daughter if she understood.”