Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Friday that Israelis are "fighting for their very lives" as President Barack Obama works feverishly to cut a nuclear deal with Iran.
"Israel is not fighting for an extra piece of real estate," Huckabee told Bill O'Reilly on O'Reilly's
Fox News program. "They are fighting for their very lives. They have been chased all over this world, the Jews have. They understand what an existential threat means.
"They know how many people would love to destroy them and annihilate them," said Huckabee, who is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. "They have had 4,000 rockets aimed into their civilian territory last summer by the Iranian-financed Hamas organization.
"So, for them, this is no abstract geopolitical discussion. This is survival."
Huckabee's remarks came a day after Obama warned that the United States would "reassess" its relationship with Israel in light of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's victory in elections on Tuesday.
The president's position was sparked by Netanyahu's campaign declaration last weekend that no Palestinian state would be created on his watch.
The White House reiterated Friday that it had little faith in
Netanyahu's reversal since winning the election, in which he has insisted that he favors a two-state solution — long a cornerstone of U.S. Middle East policy.
Huckabee told O'Reilly that Obama has long viewed Israel as an "aggressor" in the Mideast, and that position undergirds his basic approach to dealing with Iran, its president, Hassan Rouhani, and even other countries in the region.
"It's absurd to think that somehow you can make a deal with the Iranians, who under the ayatollahs have never, ever kept a deal they have made," Huckabee said. "The Israelis, on the other hand, are expected to give up land for peace.
"When they have done that, they have lost the land. They have not gained peace.
"They are facing surrounding areas that want to destroy them — and they are facing an Iranian threat, where the elected Iranian leader says we want to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth," he said.
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