President Joe Biden needs to stop criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and start putting more pressure on Hamas, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told Newsmax.
Appearing from Tel Aviv, Huckabee said Biden is an "embarrassment" for acting like he knows how to handle the Israel-Hamas war better than Netanyahu after six hostages taken by Hamas were found dead over the weekend.
"He still has four American hostages being held and instead of putting pressure on Israel, it might be really nice if he would put the pressure on Hamas and all of the people who fund them, including Iran," Huckabee told Tuesday's "National Report." "Tell them we're going to park a carrier just on the other side of Gaza, and those hostages need to be let go or we're going to start unloading on the rest of Gaza."
Huckabee said the Israelis he has spoken to are heartbroken about the news of the dead hostages.
"These are their friends, their neighbors, their families," Huckabee said. "This is a small country. There's no person in Israel who is not one degrees from separation of either a hostage or someone who was murdered back on Oct. 7. I just find it untenable that any one of the United States would try to tell Israel how to prosecute a war that they didn't start, and also to demand of them a cease fire when they have put repeated cease-fire agreements on the table since May of this year."
Hamas has rejected every cease-fire proposal, Huckabee noted.
"There's no seriousness from Hamas to negotiate anything," Huckabee said. "And even if you did negotiate with Hamas, you couldn't trust it because they've never, ever done anything they said they would do. And these are not people who run a government. These are terrorists."
Huckabee criticized the Biden administration for lifting sanctions on Iran, which was helped fund Hamas and Hezbollah.
"Iran didn't have to be bombed; they could be bankrupted," Huckabee said. "And that's exactly what the Trump administration had pretty much done. Had those sanctions continued, Iran would not have had any money to fund Hezbollah or Hamas.
"Oct. 7 was financed by Iran, but you might say it was financed by the idiocy of the United States that took our boot off of the neck of the Iranians."
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Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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