Iran Deal: Mike Huckabee Refuses To Take Back His Holocaust Comparison [Video]


Resisting criticism from across the political spectrum, GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says he won’t apologize for using a Holocaust reference to claim that the Iran nuke deal negotiated by a team headed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for the Obama administration will march Israel to “the door of the oven.”

Huckabee stood firm and even doubled-down under questioning this evening from panelists — especially Geraldo Rivera — on The Five, the highly-rated Fox News roundtable that airs live at 5 p.m. Eastern time on weekdays. See video embedded below.

According to Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007, the danger is that the Iranians leaders have refused to recognize Israel as a sovereign nation or tone down their own inflammatory rhetoric and who have continued to vow that they will wipe the Jewish state off the face of the earth.

Although a strong supporter of Israel, it’s not merely Israel’s security that Huckabee is concerned with, however. Alluding to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, and Egypt, Huckabee noted that “If it’s such a great deal, how come none of that people in that neighborhood were for it?”

Reacting to the Huckabee’s controversy, President Obama said today that “The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are just part of a general pattern we’ve seen that would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad.”

Huckabee, in turn, rejected Obama’s premise that the U.S. has only two options: accept the deal as is or go to war with Iran.

Like him or hate him, and right now he is on the receiving end of a lot of hate so it seems, Mike Huckabee is a very fluid communicator.

Iran is officially designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department.

Virtually all Republicans and many Democrats oppose the Iran nuke deal reached in Vienna on the grounds that its provisions are too weak to prevent the aggressive regime from developing an A-bomb, but it remains to be seen if there are enough votes among Democrats joining with Republicans in Congress to kill it. It also emerged this past week that there are secret side agreements in the nuclear pact that have not been shared with Congress.

Under Article II, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution, international treaties require the approval of at least 67 U.S. Senators. Under compromise legislation agreed to between the administration and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, however, the Iran deal will go into effect as an executive agreement unless at least two-thirds of the both houses of Congress, i.e., a veto-proof majority, turn it down, which seems unlikely given the politics in Washington. The agreement has already been approved by the United Nations Security Council. Iran stands to bank as much as $150 billion as soon as the U.S. and the international community lifts economic sanctions.

An Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal contends that the Iran accord is an end-run around of the Constitution and also that it may be inconsistent with international law provisions that outlaw genocide and threats of genocide.

Admitting his “love” for Huckabee as a person and a candidate for higher office, Geraldo begged the ex-gov on the Five broadcast to apologize for what he considered an offensive, inappropriate comparison that outraged the Jewish community.

Huckabee had other ideas and remained unapologetic.

“I will not apologize and I will not recant because the word Holocaust was invoked by the Iranian government. They used that very word… when you have a government saying that they’re gonna kill every Jew on the planet earth, and they used the term Holocaust, I’m not sure why we have memorials about the Holocaust if we’re not going to remember why we had it, what happened to six million Jews, how they were systematically murdered…for 36 years, [the ayatollahs] have continually said we’re going to kill every Jew. Now at what point when a gun is pointed to your head do you not take that seriously?”

Huckabee also suggested that Jewish Democrats have universally condemned his remarks for political reasons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYF8GfFARGU

Noting that he has visited three times the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland — where the Nazis committed genocide against about 1.1 million Jews — and stood next to the door of the gas ovens, Mike Huckabee declared, “For 6,000 years, Jews have been chased and hunted and killed all over this earth, and someone in a government says ‘we’re going to kill them,’ I think, by gosh, we’d better take that seriously.”

Do you think that suggesting a linkage between the Iran deal and the Holocaust requires Mike Huckabee to apologize to anyone he might have offended?

[Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News]

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