Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee left Iowa this week for a short fundraising trip to Israel, where he spoke to the media and raised money in both Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The 2016 GOP presidential candidate has taken multiple trips to Israel in the past, leading tours of evangelical Christians, but this was his first campaign trip overseas. Huckabee focused on preventing a nuclear Iran and supporting Israel in the face of Palestinian terror.
Huckabee’s main campaign stop was in Shiloh, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Even though Shiloh is a Palestinian territory, Huckabee said that he believes that Israel has a closer connection to the town than the United States does to Manhattan, due to the biblical history of the land.
“I feel like it is the right thing to stand with Israel in making sure they have the right to secure their homeland with safe and defendable borders,” he said.
He added, “It is interesting to me that our government has put more pressure on the Israeli government to stop building bedrooms in their own neighborhoods than on Iran to stop building bombs.”
Last month, Huckabee’s campaign released an ad condemning the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, claiming that the agreement would be leading Israel to “the door of the oven,” a reference to the Holocaust. The ad received much criticism from the Jewish community for being too heavy-handed.
On his latest trip to to the Holy Land, Huckabee also met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and toured Jerusalem, speaking with the media as well as prominent Jewish donors.
Huckabee is not the only candidate to fundraise overseas. In 2012, Mitt Romney campaigned in both Israel and London, courting top donors like Sheldon Adelson. Huckabee’s most recent trip was sponsored by Simon Falic, a Republican who was one of the biggest American contributors to Netanyahu’s reelection campaign earlier this year.
“I wish that every candidate, Republican or Democrat, would come to Israel to show solidarity with the country that most reflects the mirror image of the American spirit, to show solidarity with the Israeli people and to show their extreme disgust with any deal with Iran,” Huckabee said.
