Mike Huckabee: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian”

Mike Huckabee, a Republican and former Gov. of Arkansas, threw his hat into the ring for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination last May. Huckabee joins a growing pool of Republican candidates running on a platform of extreme social conservatism.

https://twitter.com/Palestinolizer/status/571053312537174017

Democrats and Republicans dominate America’s political landscape and differ greatly on most issues at home and abroad. However, what remains consistent across the board for the 2016 presidential candidates is their unconditional support for Israel and demonization of Palestine.

This is not Huckabee’s first attempt at the presidential ticket. At a campaign stop during his 2008 presidential run, Mike Huckabee told supporters he does not believe Palestinians actually exist.  The video was posted by BuzzFeed this past Wednesday and has been on YouTube since 2010.

In the video, a man asks Huckabee to comment on the dynamics of Palestine and Israel.

Huckabee responds “I mean, there really is no such thing as — I need to be careful about saying this, because people will really get upset — there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian. There’s not.”

According to Huckabee, the concept of a Palestinian is “a political tool to try to force land away from Israel.”

Huckabee also says, “you look at a map, and say here’s how much Israel has and here’s how much the Arab states hold, there’s plenty of land.”

Huckabee is not the only candidate to vocalize his opposition to Palestine. Former Secretary of State and U.S. presidential candidate  Hillary Clinton, publicly denounced Palestinian rights advocacies and the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Additionally, Republican nominee Donald Trump is a self-proclaimed “ardent Zionist” who strongly endorses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While Palestine appears to be a bipartisan issue for the 2016 presidential candidates, they are in desperate need of a history lesson.

Palestine was partitioned in 1947 by a U.N. decree in response to a global zionist movement following the Holocaust.

The United Nations declared that 55 percent of the land in Palestine would go to its Jewish population, with the other 45 percent going to indigenous Palestinians, who for centuries had lived on 100 percent of their homeland.

Despite all logic and reason, Israel declared itself an independent state in 1948 resulting in the ethnic cleansing of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland, an event commonly referred to as al-Nakba.

Today, Israel is an apartheid state that continues to illegally expand its borders outward onto Palestinian territory and commit various crimes against Palestinians.