On Christian Zionism (2)
On February 20, 2026, Tucker Carlson shared on his YouTube channel an interview with Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassodor to Israel. Much of the interview is Huckabee’s defense of Christian Zionism against Tucker’s skepticism of the whole enterprise. Huckabee has served as a Baptist pastor from 1980 to 1992, and is viewed as an articulate and passionate apologist for the Christian Zionist position. His conversation with Tucker Carlson may therefore help us understand the phenomenon in question, including its strenghts and weaknesses.
At 48:11, Huckabee offers a definition of the word “Zionist.”
Zionist: A Zionist simply means a person who believes that the Jewish people have a right to have a homeland where they have security and safety, that you believe that the Jews have a right to live in Israel.
By definition, a Zionist is a supporter of Zionism. One thing that all sides can agree about Zionism is that it is a contested concept—it means different things to different people. But notice Huckabee’s use of the word “simply,” which implies that Zionism is a straightforward concept with a single, agreed-upon definition. He then goes on to define Zionism in a way that erases the immense amount of controversy that surrounds both the concept and the movement, presenting it as something so innocent and unproblematic that only an irrational or immoral person would be opposed to it.
If Huckabee had said that “the Jewish people have a right to security and safety,” there would be absolutely no reason for anyone to disagree with him. Instead, his definition implies that security and safety for the Jewish people require that they live in their own homeland, i.e., in IsraelS. This raises a number of questions that Huckabee does not address. First, are the Jewish people in New York and Florida not enjoying security and safety? Second, how are the Jewish people secure and safe in a country that is said to be surrounded by hostile and fanatic neighbors? Third, is the idea that a people can only be secure and safe in their own homeland (i.e., state) a universal principle? Or does Huckabee believe that it is only the prerogative of the Jewish people? In the former case, he has to explain why he does not assert that right for the countless ethnic groups around the world who do not identify with the nation-states within which they are living as marginalized or persecuted minorities? In the latter case, he has to provide a legal and/or moral justification for the special status of the Jewish people.
As the rest of the interview demonstrates, Huckabee is not referring to any universal principle; he believes, rather, that the right of the Jewish people to their own state is absolutely unique, since the Jewish people themselves are absolutely unique. Huckabeen cannot justify this claim by appealing to any universal principle, whether legal or moral. The only grounds he is able to offer come from the Christian-Zionist reading of the Bible—grounds that do not, and cannot, persuade anyone who does not accept the authority of the Bible, its relevance to the international order, or its dispensationalist interpretation. Huckabee’s definition is therefore an attempt to universalize the particular, to make a limited and peculiar viewpoint appear normal and normative.
Read Huckabee’s definition once more and consider what is missing, what has been left unsaid. The discussion is taking place in the context of a genoicde, or, at the very least, in relation to a conflict that has been going on for more than a century. Yet, Huckabee is defining a Zionist, and therefore Zionism, by using language that only mentions one party, as if there was only one group of people whose security and safety mattered. Since there are no Palestinians in Huckabee’s universe, Zionism cannot be guilty of any wrongdoing. Once the horrendeous consequences of Zionism for the Palestinian people have been erased from awareness, Zionism becomes an entirely victim-less cause. But a more honest definition of a Zionist would have to include the other side of the equation as well. It would have to include, in other words, the logical corollary of wanting security and safety for the Jewish people in a land they have occupied through deciet and force. For example, “a Zionist is a person who believes that the Jewish people have a right to live in security and safety while witholding the same right from the native population.” Or, alternatively, “a Zionist is a person who believes that the lives and rights of Israeli Jews should be prioritized over the lives and rights of the Palestinian people.”
A definition of Zionism that does not include its real-world consequences is no definition at all. It is, rather, an exercise in obfuscation, ideology, and propaganda.