Huck Touches a Nerve

Mike Huckabee set off a firestorm this week when he declared, of President Obama’s deal with Iran, “He would take Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven.”

Huckabee has received blowback from a range of Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League, America’s premier watchdog group against anti-Semitism. But he’s not backing down.

He shouldn’t.

While there have been disturbing reports that many U.S. Jews support the Obama Administration-led “deal” with Iran, most Americans do not, and not all U.S. Jews do, either. It appears increasingly clear that the more people, including Jewish-Americans, actually know about the deal, the less they support it.

Despite the Obama Administration line that this deal – which every segment of Israeli society, from left to right, opposes – somehow makes Israel “safer,” the reality is that most American Jews remain blissfully unaware of its particulars. One of its most disturbing components is language that suggests the United States and other countries will block any attempt to use “cyberattack” to halt Iran’s nuclear program –  a fact that Secretary of State John Kerry, when questioned earlier this month about it by Senator Marco Rubio – declined to flat out deny. Instead, he spoke in general terms about how the United States would coordinate with Israel and that he doesn’t “see any way possible that we will be in conflict with Israel” but added, ominously, “We just have to wait until we get to that point.”

It’s an open secret that thus far, Israel has ingeniously stymied Iran’s efforts to get a nuclear weapon using cyberattack.

So. We have a genocidally inclined regime declaring its intent to destroy an entire nation, and a small nation having used its wits to thus far prevent it from attaining nuclear capability. We now have a superpower overseeing an international “deal” that would effectively block the Israelis from being able to block Iran using cyberattack.

And all along, Iran has never stopped declaring its intent to destroy Israel.

Meanwhile, the world community, including American Jews, passively drift along, holding on to the hand of the U.S. President, convinced there is no alternative. But in effect, this deal blocks at least one alternative, leaving Israel powerless to defend itself through one ingenious – and nonviolent – route that has worked so far.

On the Today show this week, Huckabee said, “The reason the Holocaust happened was because so many people believed Neville Chamberlain’s ridiculous statement that we’re gonna bring ‘Peace in Our Time.'”

Indeed.

Huckabee touched a nerve because perhaps, despite their denial, deep down many U.S. Jews know the truth: the road to the Holocaust was fast, but it was also slow. There was a decade at least of fiery, rage-filled speeches, of Nuremberg Laws, of the world denying the maniacal threat of what Hitler intended because no one wanted war. Well, what many liberals, including U.S. Jews, fail to understand is that no one wants war now either – except for the fanatics in the Islamic world who are clearly declaring their intentions every day. I’m sure President Obama hopes for the best and doesn’t actively want Iran to get a bomb. But he is making a colossal error in judgment, one that Israeli leaders cannot afford.

It is the very colossal error of judgment that the free world made in underestimating Hitler’s evil designs. You can’t make a deal with the devil and expect it will be honored. American people, including American Jews, have the power to say no, via our elected representatives to a “deal” that will indeed make Israel far more vulnerable and that could be a first step on the way to the ovens, indeed.

In dramatic, florid language, Huckabee articulated the harsh truth. Perhaps he sounds alarmist, but frankly, to anyone truly paying attention, the situation is alarming, and American Jews are asleep. Seventy years post-Holocaust, there is no excuse for this apathy, denial, and foolishly blind trust.

Thanks for the wake-up, Huck.