Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) was repeatedly interrupted by Pro-Palestinian protestors during his opening remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Let's see, let's start with Mr. Huckabee.
00:08Chairman Risch and Ranking Member Shaheen, distinguished members of the committee,
00:12I want to say thank you very, very much for giving me the privilege of coming.
00:15I am a proud American Jew.
00:17I am a proud American Jew.
00:19Yesterday's session was about-
00:21Jews stay in the House!
00:23Jews stay in the House!
00:25Jews stay in the House!
00:27Jews stay in the House!
00:29Sorry about that.
00:31Committee will come back to order.
00:33Mr. Huckabee, please proceed.
00:35I will mark them down undecided, Senator.
00:37I want to thank you for the privilege of coming before you today
00:43as you conduct the constitutional obligation of advice and consent
00:48of those who have been nominated by the President to serve as an ambassador to our beloved nation.
00:53The founders recognized that Senate approval was not necessarily Senate agreement with the President,
01:01his policies, or even with those he selected to represent him.
01:05But the Senate affirms that those nominated be thoroughly examined to determine moral and legal fitness to serve.
01:13I'm aware that not everyone on this committee will agree with the President's policies or his personnel choices in his administration.
01:22I'm not here to articulate or even defend my own views or policies,
01:27but rather to present myself as one who will respect and represent the overwhelmingly elected President.
01:34President Trump's historic first-term success with the Abraham Accords,
01:39I believe, gives us real hope of what will happen over the next four years.
01:43And I'm grateful that President Trump has charged me with the extraordinary privilege
01:49to serve as ambassador to the State of Israel, if confirmed.
01:53I'm blessed to have a wonderful and supportive family, especially my wife of almost 51 years, Janet, who is with me today.
02:02I'm sure some of you are thinking, we look quite young to have been married 51 years,
02:08but we got married when we were 18, and in Arkansas we were considered late bloomers.
02:15My three adult children and my seven grandchildren are watching, and I'm grateful for them.
02:21I grew up in a small orange brick shotgun rent house in a little town called Hope, Arkansas.
02:29No male upstream from me, not one, in my entire family lineage had ever graduated from high school.
02:37The very notion that I would one day be governor of my state or be nominated to serve as an ambassador
02:44would have been laughable in my childhood.
02:47I stand here today grateful to God for his grace and goodness, and it is the only explanation for my being here.
02:55I would say the same for the nation that I've been nominated to deploy to.
03:00Israel is a tiny nation the size of New Jersey.
03:06And it's the only rational explanation for its existence in various forms for the past 3,500 years would be the grace...
03:13How can we misuse Christianity to justify ethnic cleansing?
03:17How can we misuse Christianity to justify ethnic cleansing?
03:22Free Palestine! Senators ask him about the endgame of Christian Zionism for Palestinians in Israel!
03:29Free Palestine! Free Palestine! Free Palestine!
03:34Free Palestine! Free Palestine!
03:39Well, the good news is they're not members of my family, which might be the case protesting me sometimes.
03:45I first visited Israel almost 52 years ago. It was the summer of 1973.
03:51It was just three months before the Yom Kippur War.
03:54I was 17 years old, right out of high school. It was a month before my 18th birthday.
04:00And despite my growing up in poverty, my soon-to-be-college roommate came from an affluent family.
04:07We really were the prince and the pauper.
04:10My friend wanted to take a senior trip to the Middle East, and his father was willing to let him go,
04:15but only if I went along, and the father offered to pay my way to make it possible.
04:21In that summer, we went to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and Israel.
04:29All of them were fascinating.
04:31But it was Israel that had an impact on me that 52 years later I still find hard to explain.
04:39I started taking groups of people to visit there in 1981.
04:43I've led tens of thousands of people to visit the Bible lands.
04:47The number of trips that I've made there probably approximates 100.
04:51I've made deep and lasting friendships among Jewish and Arab populations.
04:56Israel and the U.S. have desecrated the Holy Land!
05:01Stop desecrating the Holy Land!
05:04Stop the ethnic cleansing! Stop the ethnic cleansing!
05:10Thank you, Senator.
05:12I still believe it is the Promised Land, its holy ground, to Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
05:19Since 1948, when Israel was finally recognized as an independent Jewish state, it has always been under attack.
05:26The first nation to officially recognize Israel was the United States,
05:31when our president, Harry S. Truman, did so within minutes of it being constituted as an independent state.
05:37Israel faced an immediate war in 1948 from the nations that surrounded it.
05:43It had another one in 1956, 1967, 1973, and yet others in 1982, 1990, and 2014.
05:54The terrorist group Hamas launched an attack October 7, 2023, against innocent civilians,
06:01including pregnant women, elderly people, and even tiny and helpless babies.
06:08The impact of that massacre continues to this very day.
06:14The ongoing war and the situation with the hostages, including American citizens, makes this assignment urgent.
06:23This body acted with bipartisanship and great dispatch as a result of the October 7 massacre of Israeli citizens,
06:32when our most recent ambassador, Jack Lew, was nominated by President Biden.
06:37And that sense of urgency has not dimmed. That war still continues.
06:43And for that reason, I respectfully ask your thoughtful consideration for confirmation
06:48to become our nation's ambassador to the State of Israel. Thank you.