An einem sog. «Town Hall» sprach gestern Mike Huckabee, der US-Botschafter in Israel, in Turmusayya – auch als Turmus Ayya geschrieben. Die Stadt liegt nahe Ramallah, und ist bekannt dafür, dass sie einen ausserordentlich hohen Anteil an Bewohnern mit US-amerikanischer Staatsbürgerschaft besitzt. Insofern ist es naheliegend, dass die Rede und der Besuch nicht zufällig jetzt stattfanden, knapp 2 Monate vor den in den USA stattfindenden «Midterms» – den in der Mitte der Amtsperiode stattfindenden Präsidenten-Wahlen. Aber, auch wenn die Rede unter diesen, eben genannten Vorzeichen gehalten wurde, muss sie ebenso mit Blick auf den Redner Beachtung finden:
Botschafter Mike Huckabee blickt auf eine beachtliche Karriere – ja, einen beachtlichen Lebenslauf – zurück. Die politische Laufbahn des Republikaners Huckabees hatte im Jahr 1992 begonnen, in dem der Demokrat Bill Clinton Präsident geworden war, im Wahlkampf zum Amt des Gouverneurs von Arkansas – bekanntlich ein ehemaliger Amtsinhaber in diesem Bundesstaat. Er verlor zwar, eroberte jedoch das Amt vier Jahre später und hielt das Amt bis zum Jahr 2007. Vom darauffolgenden Jahr an kandidierte Huckabee in jedem Präsidentchafts-Wahlkampf, auf der Seite der Republikaner, bis einschliesslich 2016. In diesem Jahr, so wurde es jedenfalls damals kolportiert, machte der spätere Präsident Donald Trump ihm das Angebot, Botschafter in Israel zu werden – was Huckabee jedoch nicht anzunehmen bereit war. Allerdings wurde seine Tochter Pressesprecherin in der ersten Präsidenschaft von Donald Trump – also war zumindest ein Familienmitglied ein Trumpianer!
Hier zunächst die einleitenden Bemerkungen des heutigen US-Botschafters in Israel. Es wird schnell klar, weshalb er gerade jetzt das Wort ergreift: er übermittelt die Botschaft, dass sein «Boss» – Präsident Trump, so nicht selber öffentlich auszusprechen bereit ist. Das wäre eine Sicht auf dei Geschehnisse: Juden kämpfen mit Arabern um die Herrschaft eines Gebiets, das völkerrechtlich als nicht ihnen gehörend angesehen wird. Wenn Ihnen, verehrte Leser, diese Darstellung bekannt vorkommt, so ist es kein Zufall. Sie weckt die Erinnerung an die Zeiten vor der Staatsgründung, während des Völkerbundsmandats, als sich die Engländer gegen die jüdischen Bewohner positionierten, weil die Weltgemeinschaft auch nicht bereit war, den Juden einen Staat zu geben. Dazu rang sie sich erst durch nach den Menschheitsverbrechen an den sechs Millionen Ermordeten und den mindestens nochmal so vielen geschundenen Überlebenden. Die Traumata der letzteren tragen wir, deren Nachkommen, bis heute in uns. Und es heisst, es benötige mindestens vier Generation, um das zu überwinde. Davon spricht aber bis heute fast niemand!
Warum wohl? Wir meinen, weil es eben doch nur wieder die Juden sind – und das kann man auch ignorieren!
Plus ça change, …
Achtzig Jahre nach der Schoa sind wir wieder die Prügelknaben! Darüber hat der US-Botschafter in Israel jedoch nicht gesprochen. Und, weil er als Botschafter doch nur der Überbringer der «Botschaft seines Herrn» ist, schaut man wieder zu. Wir aber weigern uns, bloss zuzuschauen, wir benennen den Missstand, weil wir ihn so empfinden, weil er in uns Erinnerungen an vergangen und überwunden Geglaubtes weckt! Wehret den Anfängen, bevor es zu spät ist!
Saturday, September 5, 2026
Opening Remarks
I want to begin by thanking our host. Samir, thank you so much for the hospitality to be in your home. This is a magnificent home, and I want to say “thank you, sir.” An honor to be here. It’s such a beautiful place. I think before I leave, I’ll make an offer on it – though I don’t think so, not on my State Department salary. I’d have to find a different job than a government one to afford it. I deeply appreciate your willingness to let all of us come, and you’re a better man than me to let this many press people show up at your home too. So I want to say how grateful I am, not just for the hospitality, but for your openness in speaking with us today.
We come here today primarily not to tell you something, but to have you tell us something. That’s the reason we’re here. I want to make it very clear: as the U.S. Ambassador, I work for you. You don’t work for me. I work for you. You pay my salary when you pay American taxes, and I hope you pay them all, because we need the money –but in all seriousness, sometimes people in government forget who they work for. It’s never lost on me that you’re the bosses. We’re the people who work for you.
There are two basic functions a U.S. embassy has when it’s overseas. One, serve the people of America who live overseas, so it’s a people job. And the second thing is to carry out the policy of the country, whatever that foreign policy is, depending on the administration. So it’s pretty simple: we’re here to serve people, and we’re here to carry out policy.
The reason I’m here today is because I’m very aware that a lot of the American people who live in Turmusayya and other communities across this region are not enjoying the life they deserve to live, not enjoying it in a peaceful way. It’s a life that is disturbed by people who have created extraordinary challenges that are unfair and illegal.
I hope you recognize that I’ve been very clear in public statements saying that when someone takes over another person’s home, if there are squatters that come in and put up their own flags and take possession of something that does not belong to them; if they burn a car, if they torch a mosque, if they go into someone’s home and vandalize it, paint graffiti on the walls, that’s a criminal act.
But it extends beyond a criminal act. It’s an act of terror. I’ve been criticized a little bit for calling that terror, but terror is when a person is forced to change his or her behavior because of the behavior of someone else who is trying to use intimidation to make them afraid to live in their own homes, to make their children afraid to play in their own yards, to be able to walk their own streets.
You have a right to live in peace. You have a right to be able to enjoy the homes that you have built and paid for. When you build a home as magnificent as the one that Samir has built, you have every expectation that that home is going to be not just a place where you live, but a sanctuary for you and your family, a place where, when you close the door at night, you feel safe, you feel secure. Anything that threatens that is an act of terror.
That’s why we are here today, and I brought General Salene, who works with what I think is a very effective entity that ties between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, with partners from other countries to try to figure how can we de-escalate tension and problems, and then not only how we tamp down the problems, but how do we build relationships across cultures, languages, religions, and peoples, so that people can coexist without the terror, without the fear, and without the insecurity of wondering whether today is the day someone is going to come and break a window at my home, or set fire to a car, or tear at my olive trees. In addition, we have people from our embassy’s Consular section who help Americans get their passports renewed and get visas to travel to places. They are here as well today. We brought a number of our people that normally would be working in government offices.
I want to say that Samir has allowed us to make this the official office of the United States today, as we come to bring our services to you, rather than asking you to bring your needs to us. We are here for the single purpose of saying: we work for you. Tell us how we can better serve you. I’ll be clear up front –there’s a good chance I may not be able to solve all the situations and problems you’re facing, but we can’t even work on them if we don’t know what they are. I think we know some of them, but I’m here to listen, and that’s our purpose today.
There are things the American Embassy cannot do. We cannot investigate criminal activity, because we don’t have that authority in another country. We cannot adjudicate criminal activity in another country because we don’t have the authority to do that. What we can do is express to the government that hosts us that there are needs that need to be addressed, there are issues that cannot go unnoticed, and specific crimes and acts of terror that cannot continue without that country doing the investigation and adjudication that every person has a right to expect. There should not be a different standard of justice applied to you than to anyone else. If you’ve listened to what I’ve said over the past several months, you’ve heard it clearly: I’ve told the government of Israel, and I’ve told our people back in Washington, that there needs to be an equal disbursement of justice for every kind of crime, without distinction. It’s not about who does it; it’s about what was done and how it will be met with consequences.
Let me conclude my brief remarks by being a little practical. You can probably tell by the looks of me; I’m older than most of you in this gathering. Maybe I’m the oldest. I hope not.
I will tell you that I’ve lived long enough. I’ve raised children. I’ve got seven grandchildren. Here’s what I’ve learned. I’ve raised children, and I’ve trained some dogs. My wife and I have two little dogs now. We’ve always had dogs. We love dogs.
I’ve learned from raising children and training dogs that if there is a behavior that you want more of, you reward the behavior, and you get more of that behavior. But if there’s a behavior that you want less of, you consequence that behavior.
I tell people, some of you Americans will understand this. I tell people I grew up in a very patriotic family back in Hope, Arkansas, where I grew up. When I say patriot, my dad was the most patriotic American I knew. He laid on the stripes, I saw stars. That’s the kind of patriotism I lived with.
My point is that if there’s a behavior that you don’t want to have more of, you have to consequence it. There has to be a penalty that says, “I don’t really enjoy the penalty that is worth the activity that I’m doing.” So that’s a lesson. It’s not complicated, and what we have to do is to advocate that there are rewards for good behavior, and that there are consequences for bad behavior that would be applied. It doesn’t matter who one is, where one lives, that that would be applied equally and appropriately.
We’re here today to hear you, to listen to your concerns, to answer them when we can, and to try to work with you to get answers where it’s possible, and where it isn’t, where it’s beyond our scope of being able to resolve something. We’re going to try to be as honest with you as we can, and not promise something today that we can’t deliver, because I think there’s nothing worse than someone coming and saying, “Oh yes, we’re going to fix that,” deep down knowing we have no ability to do that.
I was in politics long enough in the States to know that people have an expectation that political people will promise you everything and deliver very little.
So I’m going to try to be more of a diplomat than a politician today. I will listen. I hope to learn. I hope to be able to honestly express to you what we can do, and honestly express to you what we cannot do.
But I hope that even when we cannot, you will know that we didn’t just say, “Send us an email.” We didn’t say, “Come see us.” We came to see you and came to listen to you. And I hope that we have a very, very productive day together.
And I thank you very much for coming on what is a beautiful day. But I know you’re giving up this beautiful day to sit around and talk to me. Thank you very, very much for being here. Thank you.
Und gleich danach, seine abschliessenden Worte, nach dem Town Hall:
I want to thank you first of all, not just for your attendance. I’m more grateful for the candor of your comments today. You’ve been very forthright. You’ve not tried to make this a time that is easy to hear these stories, and I’m especially grieved for you because what you’ve described is a level of being subjected to lawlessness and something that most of us could never imagine nor tolerate in our own lives, in our own worlds, in our communities.
It’s so very important that we came today in order to hear firsthand what you’ve experienced.
What I said at the beginning, I want to just repeat: You’re Americans. You hold an American passport. You are our responsibility. That’s why we’re here.
If you weren’t Americans, we would have no reason, no jurisdiction, no connection that we would be able to say we’re going to represent you because we would just be foreigners in a foreign land. We could raise our voices, but we would have no authority.
We don’t have authority to arrest anybody, to investigate, to adjudicate. Our authority is one that really resides in the fact that the United States, being a significantly large country with great power, has the ability to express the will of our country and to put pressure in order to get some resolution to things you’ve brought up today.
I’m grateful that General Salene is here. Several members of his team are here. Really, there’s nobody from the United States that is closer to the front line of being able to intervene than this process that puts together Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, Canadians, Dutch, British, and a host of nations for the sole purpose of trying to mediate and deal with the very things you talked about.
But it’s critical –it’s just critical –that in expressing that, we have your stories, because if we don’t have them, if we don’t know what you’ve been through, then it’s hard for us to communicate what a very serious crisis exists.
I’m deeply grieved on a personal level that some of your children, and your stories about your sons, your stories about your children. Of all the things that get really close to me, it’s the stories that children are going to grow up wondering, “Why don’t these people respect me and like me? What have I done to them?”
And I really do want to communicate to you that I have almost daily conversations, not only with the Israeli government, but with a lot of people who live as Israelis. There’s half a million who live in the West Bank, and I want to say to you that most of them are disgusted by the behavior of this band of terrorists.
And, by the way, those terrorists torched a mosque this last week and wrote my name in graffiti and said, “Huckabee, this is from the terrorist.” And I responded, “Well, at least you spelled my name right, and more importantly, you admitted who you are –you’re terrorists.” So I’m glad they admitted it. I don’t think that’s what they intended to do, but I do think that they represent a very tiny minority.
But the sad part is, it doesn’t take a lot of bad people to create a large problem, and it’s important that we continue to put the pressure to say letting a few people do these horrible activities of criminal nature is detrimental, not just to the people who live in the West Bank; it’s detrimental to everyone, Israeli, Palestinian alike.
I want to say again thank you for a very open, thoughtful conversation.
I didn’t know what to expect. Frankly, I’ve been in town halls where everyone in the room yelled at me, screamed, and tried to throw a chair. So you have been so very civil. I’m deeply grateful for that.
You’ve been honest, which is helpful for me, but you’ve done it in a very, very gracious and kind way, and that is not lost on me. Your civility, and frankly, what would be very difficult for me to probably have the same calm attitude as you’ve expressed, if this were happening to me, my family, my grandchildren, is very impressive. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Dieser Beitrag wurde aktualisiert durch Thomas Morvay, vor 1 Monat ago
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