Tucker Carlson accuses Huckabee of prioritizing Israel in combative Ben - Gurion Airport interview

yahoo.com · Feb 21, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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The conservative commentator accused US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee of 'working for Israel' during a recent interview at the Ben-Gurion Airport.In a two-and-a-half-hour episode released Friday – including a 25-minute monologue before the interview began – conservative commentator Tucker Carlson repeatedly accused US Ambassador Mike Huckabee of prioritizing Israel over the United States, on civilian casualties in Gaza, on convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, on fugitive sex offenders, and on the push for war with Iran.At one point, Huckabee pushed back, gesturing to his American flag pin: "What flag am I wearing here?""Well, that's, of course, my flag as well," Carlson replied. But he did not let up.The sit-down was filmed inside Ben-Gurion Airport's diplomatic terminal on February 18, after a public back-and-forth between the two former Fox News hosts previously reported by The Jerusalem Post. Carlson did not travel beyond the airport complex.Huckabee defended his record, pushed back on several of Carlson's characterizations, and offered what he called a faith-based case for the US-Israel relationship. Not all claims made during the exchange stood up to scrutiny.Tucker Carlson during a visit to Israel. (credit: X/@TuckerCarlson)Former Fox News anchor Melissa Francis, who told the Post she helped facilitate the sit-down, said Carlson had tried to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu through intermediaries but was rebuffed. Author and political theorist Yoram Hazony told Carlson it "would not be in his political interest to meet with you," according to Carlson's account. Francis said Netanyahu "was not interested."Carlson's monologue before the interviewCarlson preceded the sit-down with a 25-minute monologue in which he laid out his case against Israel, the embassy, and Huckabee personally. It set the tone for what followed, but it also established a pattern of claims that did not match the record.After critics noted Carlson had flown in by private jet, he addressed it in his monologue, saying he had chartered the aircraft "which I never do because I'm cheap."Carlson filmed the promotional video for his 2024 interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin from the rooftop of the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow. He owns three homes, including two waterfront properties on Gasparilla Island, purchased for a combined $8.4 million. His stepmother is an heiress to the Swanson frozen-food fortune.The monologue's characterization of Israel was equally loose. Carlson called it "probably the most violent country in the world" based on the number of citizens who have "held a gun or shot someone" – conflating mandatory military service with criminal violence in a country whose homicide rate is a fraction of Honduras, Venezuela, or South Africa, and which the 2025 Global Peace Index ranks above Russia, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria.He put the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States at "60 million" – three to six times higher than any credible estimate – and called Israel "a police state" where "they put software on your phone," overstating the documented use of NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, which has targeted specific individuals rather than visitors broadly.Pollard, embassy meetingThe interview opened with Carlson confronting Huckabee over his meetings with Jonathan Pollard, the former US Navy intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel in the 1980s."Everyone I've talked to in preparation for this has said the same thing. Jonathan Pollard," Carlson said.He called Pollard "the greatest traitor in modern American history" and said he had sold "our battle plans against the Soviet Union" to Israel, which, according to Reagan-era CIA director William Casey, then passed the intelligence to the Soviets.Pollard's case is among the most damaging espionage cases in US history, though intelligence professionals have debated whether Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen – both of whom spied for the Soviet Union and whose espionage led to the deaths of US agents – caused greater damage. Former CIA director James Woolsey noted that Pollard "did not get anybody killed and was not spying for an enemy."The declassified CIA Damage Assessment found that Israel's intelligence requests to Pollard focused on regional intelligence – information on Arab states, Pakistan, and Soviet weapons systems – rather than US war plans against Moscow.The claim that Israel passed Pollard's intelligence to the Soviets, first reported by Seymour Hersh, has never been proven. Israel denies it.Carlson then raised Pollard's 2021 interview with Israel Hayom, in which Pollard said "all Jews should have dual loyalty" and told young Jewish Americans with security clearances that "not doing anything is unacceptable" and that loyalty to Israel should be "more important than your life." Those remarks were widely reported and condemned."Do you see why the US ambassador hosting a convicted betrayer of his own country who's encouraging Americans to continue to betray their country would seem shocking?" Carlson asked.Huckabee said Pollard had visited the embassy at his own request after Huckabee sent condolences when Pollard's wife died. "I think we met for maybe 30 minutes. We had a nice, pleasant visit," Huckabee said.He pointed out that the meeting was hardly clandestine. "Tucker, if you've ever been to the US embassy, you would know there's no such thing as a secret meeting at the US embassy. There are cameras everywhere.""I did. And frankly, I don't regret it," he said.Huckabee also said Pollard had been "sentenced to 30 years." Pollard was, in fact, sentenced to life in prison. He served approximately 30 years before being paroled in November 2015.Carlson to Huckabee: 'That is calling for genocide'The interview's most intense exchange concerned what Netanyahu said on the eve of war.On October 28, 2023, as the ground invasion of Gaza began, the prime minister addressed IDF soldiers in a televised speech. "You must remember what Amalek has done to you," he said, quoting Deuteronomy 25:17.Carlson walked Huckabee through 1 Samuel 15, in which God commands the Israelites to "kill the men, kill the women, kill the children, kill the infants, kill the donkeys, kill the camels, kill everything.""That is genocide," Carlson said. "God is calling for the genocide of the Amalekites. And the prime minister of Israel described the Palestinians in Gaza as Amalek. That's calling for genocide. And you know that.""I totally disagree," Huckabee said. "Tell me then what it means."Huckabee said he did not know whether it was "an illustrative metaphor" and told Carlson: "You would have to ask him."Huckabee then made a point that went to the heart of the accusation: "Because if Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could have done it in two and a half hours." Israel possesses one of the most powerful military forces in the Middle East. His argument rested on the premise that if the intent had been total destruction, Israel had the capacity to do so long ago.Carlson pressed further: "When you say that at the outset of a war, and then you wind up with massive civilian casualties... then I have to ask you, what is that? And is that kind of thinking consistent with Western values and with Christianity? Do we as Christians believe it's okay to kill people's children?""No, we don't," Huckabee said. "And neither do the Israelis because they didn't go after their children."The Prime Minister's Office has stressed that the verse Netanyahu quoted – a commandment to remember, from Deuteronomy – is not the more violent passage Carlson cited. The phrase appears on Holocaust memorials and at Yad Vashem, and Israel's legal team at the International Court of Justice described it as a standard Jewish commemorative expression about antisemitic violence, calling South Africa's use of it in its genocide case a "grave distortion."The Amalek reference has been used throughout Jewish history as a typology for existential threats, most commonly applied to the Nazis. The rabbinical consensus is that Amalek no longer exists as a people and cannot be identified with any modern group.U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during an interview with Reuters in Jerusalem, September 10, 2025. (credit: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)What flag am I wearing here?The sharpest personal confrontation came when the conversation turned to civilian casualties and the IDF.Carlson asked how many civilians had been killed in Gaza. Huckabee said the only available numbers come from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which he called "dubious.""How many kids were killed?" Carlson asked."I don't know. I'm sure it was thousands. And it's thousands too many," Huckabee said.The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has reported over 17,000 children killed since October 7, 2023. Those figures have not been independently verified, and Israel has repeatedly questioned the ministry's methodology and its failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians.Huckabee defended the IDF, saying the military sends text messages, drops leaflets, and makes phone calls before strikes. "Nobody does that. The US doesn't do that," he said.Carlson seized on the comparison. "Your dig at the United States is very revealing," he said. "Because your priorities are very clear.""As an American, permit me a moment of outrage," Carlson said. "I said many civilians have been killed, and you said right in the middle of your elaborate defense of the IDF's killing of civilians, including children, you said they do a better job than the United States does. That's my country and my government."Huckabee responded by pointing to his flag pin: "What flag am I wearing here?""Well, that's, of course, my flag as well," Carlson said.When Carlson pushed Huckabee to cite numbers supporting his claim that the IDF had achieved a lower civilian casualty ratio than any army in modern urban warfare, Huckabee could not."You don't know the numbers, do you?" Carlso