Rejuvenation: A Friend in Deed

[Music] hi everybody this is Eve Harrow hostess of rejuvenation on the land of israel Network it is Wednesday the 17th of July 14th day of Sun was fifty seven seventy nine the bulk of today's show is going to be an interview that I recorded a couple of days ago with former governor Mike Huckabee we were both at the our got our goat ranch went there with the phallic family the incredible family that does so much for Judea and Samaria and he is here with the group he comes very often and you'll hear about that from him I know that Josh aired part of Josh hasting aired part of an interview that I think a press conference that Governor Huckabee gave a couple of days ago but this is a real interview with me for close to I'm like 40 minutes or so if there's some noises it's because we were sitting on the back of the bus that was taking us back to Jerusalem after our visit to the ranch he's busy I'm busy we've grabbed the opportunity that we could so as with so many of my interviews I don't necessarily agree with everything that said but I think it's like super important for people to be able to express their opinions and for me to give a platform to people even if I you know have slightly different opinions or even sometimes major differences of opinion but I think it's great that he comes here that he is such a wonderful supporter not just of Israel but if Jewish rights in Judea and Samaria and that he's you know grounded in the Bible and it really has done so much for this country and you know it's paid for it in some ways as well so it was delightful speaking to him and had an opportunity to hear him play the guitar also with Jeremy Simon phallic on the accordion it was quite the experience anyhow our goat ranch is a pretty magical place so I had a crazy week with a momentum with one of the groups that I'm guiding used to be Jewish women's Renaissance project I've spoken about it before interviewed some of the people who are in volved and plan to do so again as always just a wonderful week 200 women all over Israel just showing them the country the beauty of Judaism they I try and teach them but I can tell you that they always teach me something and just a real real privilege to be a part of their journey you might wonder incidentally while you're hearing this on Wednesday and not on my usual Sunday and thank you all who wrote to me and said are you ok we know that you regularly put out your show on Sunday almost like no matter what what happened so Jeremy had asked me to switch days with him as he wants it again his music video out early so we did that I hope you guys were ok hope it didn't totally mess up your week next week we should go back to our regularly scheduled programming but in the meantime I was also interviewed by an alum seagull on his radio show that plays in New York area if you want to hear that I believe it's already up on my website as are other things that I've done so that's Eve Harrow comm and so if you're like oh my god it's just we can't happens we have to hear her voice even more so feel free and as I said coming to the States looks like September and December or North America so game you can be in touch about that as well so I'd like to thank Ben and Tabitha for getting the show out and and I really everybody on the station lots more to say but it'll have to wait until next week and doesn't it seem like every single day there's some press conference about a new discovery here in the land and yes it's because now is when the archaeological digs are happening in June and July but still you know one day is a clog and another day the moat from the Crusader time period from 1099 and another day like a massive today that was the announcement a mass oh yes that meaning yesterday a massive neolithic meaning that 9,000 years ago village outside of jerusalem in one of the riverbeds from from riverbed Oh show Rick so it's just wild what's happening here and amazing I mean you guys know that I love to interview archaeologists like an embarrassment of riches where do I even begin so I'll circle back to that at some point just so many interesting people that come through here and that are somehow involved with Israel in Judaism I sometimes really I just don't know where to begin so in the mean time today we are beginning and ending with the governor Mike Huckabee thanks everybody for writing and for caring and for being interested and for tuning in hi everybody it's eve herro on rejuvenation for the land of israel Network I know you're hearing this on Wednesday instead of my usual podcast on Sunday because I switched with Jeremy and just for this week but it just so happens that I just spent a lot of time with Jeremy Gimpel it's out here we it is on Sunday out here at the Oregon ranch with a tremendous group of people Simon and Conniff Alec brought a whole bunch of people here including I'm honored to ream eat because I met him a few years ago former Governor Mike Huckabee so you're once again in Israel so glad to be back I think this year alone I will be in Israel five or six times probably would be that many times next year you know and people ask me how come you keep going back you know and I bring groups of hundreds of people every year and I tell them I said first of all I love this place and I've loved it since I first came here as a 17 year old in 1973 but I learned something new every time I come you can't exhaust the Land of Israel because the best way I can explain it if one goes to Gettysburg it's a wonderful historic site but one thing happened there one thing and you drill down and you get it all and then that's it you come to Israel and there are 50 layers of biblical history and then if you add on all the modern history you can't dig deep enough to exhaust because everywhere your foot hits was this something that was part of Abraham's experience King David Solomon Jesus every place that you go there are layers upon layers of history it's just a powerful expiry well that's why I live here it's a little country about the size of New Jersey but very deep a lot a lot of quality but you is it your faith that keeps bringing you back here is it curiosity is a love of history is it your political life and feeling that what's happening in Israel definitely affects the United States the country that you love so much you know Eve it's all of those things I've often said that my first really sense of this being a special place came in 1973 and I felt like it's the only place on earth I've ever been where I'd never been here before but the moment I came here I felt I was at home well that's spiritual so a lot of it is my faith the fact that everything that is a part of my faith happened here in this land so that gives me a great reason but then I tell people and this is genuinely true that even if my faith had all been centered in northern Europe and Israel had not one thing to do with my faith I would still find Israel to be an extraordinary amazing and magnetic country in part because over the years and I guess this is biblical but I've seen the Desert Bloom I've seen the Tri bones come to life when I came here in 1973 the country was barely 25 years old it was young I was young and it was a desolate barren land and the Jews were eking out a living selling some Jaffa oranges and trying to get a few tourists end and the infrastructure of the roads was dismal a bunch of people living on kibbutz and driving Russian cars and and they were terrible and you know what I saw though was still people who love their country and they loved their freedom and they came here escaping the galloping terrors of tyranny from all over the world to common and to freely live their Jewish faith it was so much a mirror of America in its frontier days and so it was easy to fall in love with it and through the years I've seen this country but a world technology leader a leader in agriculture a leader really in political innovations and military strategy it's simply I think it's inexplicable apart from believing that God has his hand on this country so I it so resonates what you say about coming here and feeling at home because that's what happened to me at age eight something clicked I felt like I was plugged in to the right place and that never went away and that's the reason I came back to live here and raise my children here but you know what you just said is exactly what America was like at the beginning people looking to find freedom I think of not Americans have forgotten that though that America was built to find freedom freedom of religion freedom from religion freedom from tyranny a place where people could work hard and reap the benefits of their own work and see that all happened and I worry I sit here and I see what's happening in Israel and I agree with you it's like turbo it's ridiculous like I don't even think the prophets imagined how fast this was gonna happen sometimes I think they're up there going like wow like we nailed it you know but then I worry about America can we get this back for the United States I hope so because I fear as you do that many of the younger people have no concept of our history they don't understand how hard the people worked how much they sacrificed often their own lives to create a life of freedom and prosperity for the generations to come after them and many of them knew that they wouldn't be the ones to experience that genuine sense of prosperity it would be the ones who would build on what they had but America didn't get to be strong by people having an expectation that someone would give them something America became strong because people worked unbelievably hard they sacrificed their time their efforts their talents they took great risk because they anticipated that those risks might lead to rewards but there was no guarantee fortunately for all of us many of those risks paid off and whether it was the innovation of transportation ideas of the innovation of building railroads and a telegraph system or a telephone system those things happen because people wanted to do something entrepreneurial if America can stay with that we'll be okay but I'm afraid there are many people who think that the fact that some people have wealth means that other people can't well that's that's a fallacy it's an economic idiocy because wealth actually does create jobs prosperity and capability for the people who don't have it and without that kind of risk reward situation we could lose what we've built and Israel would be a good place for us to look and say maybe they're doing what we need to get back to doing I tell people all the time that this is a country of faith and family and I'm specifically saying faith and not religion because that almost everybody here feels there's something bigger than us going on here and family because we're having children this is the highest birth rate in the Western world and that also means you believe in the future and you're happy what do you think is happening in America when it when it happens to faith and family our redefinition of families is very detrimental to our future because ultimately we have to ask who created the heavens and the earth and do we have a responsibility to follow the rules of the one who created the game if God created the heavens the earth men and women created the idea of marriage family training our replacements which is really the purpose for having children and for a mother and a father to to create those children is to train their replacements if we redefine them what it means and we make it so that it doesn't mean anything and we say that men don't matter fathers don't matter marriage doesn't matter we're going to destroy something that we don't fully embrace and understand and the net result means that we lose the foundation of civilization which is that sense of I'm personally responsible not just for bringing a child into the world but for raising him up and training him to be as good if not better than me as a human being as a part of the ongoing civilization process so your own children you've got a daughter who's going into politics in politics dabbling in politics I mean as somebody who was in that world what you're encouraging this so you're worried for her tell us a little bit about your daughter you know sarah has grown up in it she's the youngest of my three children the only girl strong as garlic but very balanced she has a real perspective about who she is she doesn't think of herself as better than others are more important I think what makes her who she is is a genuine humility an understanding that she knows who she is not only in her world but in God's world so she's a person of strong and deep abiding faith so are my two sons they're not as famous as she is but as far as encouraging her in politics I would neither encourage or discourage I would tell her follow what you believe God puts you on this earth to do and if you believe he's directing you to jump into a political endeavour then go for it if if he's not directing you then stay away from it like a disease is that what brought you into politics how did you get into politics it was really a compelling inner drive that happened over a period of time my first career was broadcasting radio and television and then I spent almost a dozen years in Christian pastoral work in church work it was during that time even though as a kid I sort of had a vision of being in political life but I'd put it aside and thought that what's never going to happen but it was during that time that that I was serving in a church that I saw people at a level that no one else gets to see them because some people they say well what does a pastor have to bring to a political realm truth is no profession quite prepares you as well as does being a pastor I would use also being a rabbi and here's why you see life at a level no one else does you see the best and the worst you see life at the beginning you see it at the end you're the one who's present at the birth of a baby you're also the one who's there holding the hand of that elderly person in ICU when they slip into eternity you're there when the teenage girl comes and tells you at 14 she's pregnant before she even goes and tells her parents you're the one who stands that the graveside of a three year old as young couple has to grieve with something that is utterly unnatural to bury your own child and you're there when middle aged adults become the parents to their parents as their parents start facing dementia and loss of capacity and they have to make decisions they'd never even imagined that they would be making for their parents so at every stage of life the best in the worst you're there and you see it you see poverty you see prosperity you see joy you see agony and I don't think that there's anything that better prepared me to make public policy decisions quite like getting a school in in what humanity is going through it was a terrific preparation and I think it made me a much better public official and gave me a different balance of public policy than if I'd simply taken sort of the automatic default position of either the Republican or the Democratic Party well because well then when you're looking at your constituents you're seeing individuals you're not just seeing a mass of a certain number of people and you're also realizing that behind the surface story there's a deeper story for example the person who commits a crime I'm not saying he's not responsible he or she is responsible for the crime and they'll have to deal with it and face consequences but there may be something deeper that has been lost maybe here's a kid who grew up with a mother who was drug addicted who was never home this is a kid who came home from school to an empty home had to cook his own meals didn't have a breakfast because no one was there to prepare it sometimes we need to have a little more sympathy with the people who have had broken lives because but by the grace of God there go there go I and I think you're also touching here on community responsibility you know we say it takes a village to raise a child so if we have neighbors because people as you said there but for the grace of God but sometimes people fall into something not because of anything they've done because somebody got sick or there was an accident and what is our responsibility as their neighbors as their friends to get in there and not just say oh well but say we're gonna pick them up and I think that's something I would imagine that also attracts you to Israel because we have a lot of that here we have a what we call arrest chats like a network here in Israel to a great degree of caring about each other even people that you don't necessarily know and to pick them up I think that's a great point Eve and I think if you look at Israel's history this country that is not that old and it's modern version it's certainly old going back to Abraham but but not that old in modern times but the organic nature of the kibbutzim and its influence on Israel it also gave Israel a real sense of community people do feel that sense of I am my brother's keeper and if my neighbor has a need then I have a responsibility to help need it that's something I believe that it's critical in a developing and a growing and prospering civilization where people don't think that they live in isolated silos unto themselves but they are a part of a bigger fabric that makes up their country their community and and and all that is a part of them and I think a great example of that is when you see when I was a kid even kids it didn't have fathers they had little ink coaches they had choir leaders they had Sunday School teachers are perhaps maybe in a yeshiva school if they were Jewish but there were other male model figures that were able to give them a sense of what it is to be a man and and to to show that level of personal responsibility it seems like we're getting further and further away where families are so disjointed people don't belong to things the civic clubs that used to be dominant in our local communities the rotary the Kiwanis Club things of that nature they're slowly disappearing because people say I don't have time for that fewer people are coaching youth teams now we are hiring people to do it it used to all be voluntary Scout troops used to all be voluntary the scouting organization is is beginning to dissipate its numbers are collapsing maybe there are a lot of reasons for that but the net result is not a good one and I do fear that we're losing something by losing that sense in which even people that were not saying well that's my son I'm gonna be a scout leader for him they did it for some greater good rather than just for them for their own children meant to be a mentor not right now the people that I see you know a lot of Western kids follow the heroes are going to be the sports you know the athletes or the rock star or the movie star hue you're not really seeing their real life it's all Instagram it's all fake stuff and that's not something that you can really grab on to that you can feel that that's what you want to do know what's important unfortunately a lot of children are growing up with little more than fantasies of what their role model should be and if it's a movie star who plays an action figure he's not really an action figure and probably couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag we're not seeing that sense of just growing up and observing adults living a life that we we value and we'd like to grow up and emulate there were people in my community when I was a kid growing up that I thought wow these are people that are caring about me and why are they doing it nobody's paying him to it had a huge influence on me because I wondered why are they doing this and I had to realize they did it because they really cared about me as a person that had an impact upon me as a teenager if they'd have been paid counselors or paid coaches it would not have had near the impact because I said well of course they're doing it it's their job they got to do it but when people do things not because they have to but because they want to that speaks a world to a child so what do you think could happen in the United States now to turn that back a little bit I think it goes back to redirecting redirecting the priority of a family where people recognize that a family needs to sit down and have dinner together they need to talk they need to absolutely put their funds away during meals and other times you know I go into a restaurant I look and there's a family sitting there at dinner for people in the family perhaps every one of them looking onto their smartphone they're not talking to each other and if they need to say something they'll text it to the person across the table this is absurd you know that you just described Friday night in a traditional Jewish family you just described to Shabbat dinner knowing the positive sense of like in my house 25 phones are put away 25 hours of you're actually talking to each other you even reading books if you're not but you're interacting with people without all that other noise and the beauty of Shabbat I think is something that saves me every single week and I think that that's a gift that Judaism can bestow if people really understood what Sabbath was they might understand more than ever the necessity it's family night it's just family night I have been so blessed when I've been invited to Jewish homes on Shabbat and to experience that interaction with every person of the family and the children having as an assigned responsibility for the meal and for doing something in terms of even the observance of Shabbat and Here I am an evangelical Christian but it was very powerful to me and I think the Christian community in America has made a huge mistake we at one time believed at least in having you know a day out of seven and for most Christians it was Sunday but stores were closed and people didn't go places on Sunday other than to their extended families they had a meal together it was the biggest meal of the week that's on Sunday after they had gone to church people didn't go to movies they didn't go shopping they didn't go play ball they basically stayed home or did something as a family whether it was to go to the lake or whatever it was the complete breakdown of that I think has been very harmful and as a evangelical I think we have a lot to learn from our Jewish brothers and sisters that the reason God gave that demand in our command for keeping the Sabbath it wasn't just a religious exercise in okay we got to do this because he said everything God commands us to do has a practical value that even if we don't understand it at the moment in time we will fully understand and embrace you know God was pretty smart when he put this together and it goes back to my point why don't we play by the rules of the one who made the game he might have a better understanding of how it's to be played and how it is played unto a point of success than those of us who haven't been on this earth very long and really aren't as smart as we think we are do you did you ever get to go to Europe do you ever see what's happening in Europe what are your thoughts about that I'm there almost every year sometimes more than once and it's almost unrecognizable from what it was 25 years ago what I'm about to say I don't mean it to be offensive and and I hope people will not take it I'm sure they will some well because they want to be offended but there is a islamification of Europe that is taking place and it's not that there's something inherently wrong with people who embrace Islam that's that's a right people have but it is a culture that is at the antithesis of Western civilization I'll give a couple of examples for one the sense of the worth of women it is something that is hardwired into us in Western civilization granted it took us a while to get it right and we're still developing in some areas but as we advanced our own understanding of of Worth and value of the individual we came to realize that women were definitely different but of equal value and intrinsic worth and that was a real dramatic improvement from so many cultures in which women are devalued not allowed to participate in even such basic things as driving but it goes deeper I was going to give another example of what I'm speaking of it goes to the heart of a sense of personal freedom and within a strong Islamic culture particularly the radical organization there are many Muslims who don't embrace this at all they're they're very westernized which is of course an anathema to the more radical but the radical ones really are tearing museums down and destroying Antiquities because it may not somehow connect with the most strict Sharia law well the danger of that is we lose our history we lose our sense of who we have been and I've often said that history is to a culture what memory is to the individual and if an individual wakes up and can't remember who he is where he lives what his name is he's utterly lost and is in a state of chaos if a civilization doesn't know where it's come from who it is what made them who they are and how did they get there they're going to be very lost and confused so the destruction of Antiquities whether it's going in and burning all the books destroying the the artifacts of history as has been done in places like Iran and Lebanon these are tragedies of immense proportion because it's the destruction not of things it's the destruction of our understanding of who we are in culture you know I tell that to people and when I talk about the Bible to them not even a religious sense its historical memory as Jews when we sit at a Passover Seder I left Egypt ok I'm connecting to my forefathers through the ages we all experience this together and that imprints on your DNA in such a way that you feel that you're connected to a whole lot of people and because you went through the same thing and I agree with you when you destroy that when you take that away from people or you try and destroy someone else's because you feel that their history threatens yours and which is exactly what we see happening here there's only one narrative that can be allowed to today out there then that is really really very very sad and that's what we're seeing in the Middle East something the initial is trying to fight against all the time the things that we discover here and I I interview archaeologists all the time I said Scott stripling on from chilo who was do you know and he's gonna be back next week to present at a conference belongs to everybody I mean every time period if it was Canaanites or Hittites or you know the Byzantine period or the Second Temple period we got to bring it out we got to show it we have to feel confident enough and who we are to be able to say it this is the history and I think archaeology is a great reminder that the history that we've lived the history worth preserving is a history that is knowable archaeology has been extraordinarily important even in establishing Israel as a nation because for those who said well there's really no genuine connection of the Jewish people of this land there is never been not once an archaeological discovery that controverted Scripture that is an incredible truth I mean the the findings at the City of David I was just there a few weeks ago and what they have uncovered there is it's some of the most stunning and significant archaeological discoveries that whether a person is Christian or Jew it just or even if a person is not a religious person but they want to believe that there is something about our history that we can actually know and it's not just myth our oral traditions archaeology helps to put that into rock and stone in a way that validates what we've been saying it's incredibly exciting I encourage people to come here all the time participating to dig if you can see what's going on here I mean we're in living digs all the time that's great that you were in the city of David I think that's probably the most important site for people to be going to I do too and and what they're continuing to find and this is what's amazing to me I mean the City of David has been there for four thousand three thousand years so it's not like it went away it's just that over the years it got lost in the dust of human history and progress but now as we go and we dig down and we find that that Street that goes from the pool of siloam all the way to the Temple Mount for a Jew that's what a validation that that process of going up that moment to the Temple Mount was was real and it was not just a story but it actually was the the practice and the life of those who live their faith for Christians it's a reminder Jesus walked on that very Road and his own Trek up that place validates the scripture so it's it's an extraordinary find and especially in that so much of it is in pristine condition I think that's what was stunning when I was there there are places in Israel where I've been the Archaea archaeological sites it's very powerful and very validating but you almost have to be an archaeologist or have one standing there to explain what you're really looking at the City of David you can just be a tourist and it's pretty obvious what you're looking at that staircase and that still looks like a staircase road is there that even that pillar where people would go and speak it's kind of like the soapbox you know that was there for people to get up and get something off their chest there it stands as a wonderful reminder of of our history of our common story and what made our civilization what it is based on the judeo-christian understanding of individual responsibility but also individual accountability to God that were not just corporately accountable for our behavior we are individually accountable for it which i think is the essence of the biblical message is that God created us as individuals not just as faceless nameless pawns in a larger corporate block he loves us individually he knows us individually but he also expects of us individually to live the life that he is prescribed and to make good choices with whatever talents gifts or weaknesses that he's given each one of us as individuals without comparing ourselves to anybody else one of the things that a trip to Israel does it helps a person to see the faith that they've only imagined I tell people all the time when I bring them here I said before you come to Israel you'll read the Bible and it'll be a wonderful book but it'll be all in black and white once you've been here and you have a frame of reference you're gonna go home and for the rest of your life the Bible will be an HD vivid color it'll never be the same book you'll never be the same person and it will be transformational because when you hear something about going down to Jericho you will have been on that road and you know you are physically going from a mountain of three or four thousand feet to the lowest place on earth it's at sea level and you understand or that's a literal reference going down and over and over on every page something will jump out at you and you'll say I remember I saw that it'll be vivid and I think that's one of the great reasons that every person who genuinely has a love for the Bible or a love for history a trip to Israel is absolutely a must on the bucket list well I'm definitely going to agree with you especially people who live in young countries in the United States is a young country I mean you know like some of our houses here have plumbing that's older than the United States I'm not even joking and so piggyback on our history here live in a young country but come to Israel and and check in and plug in to your history that was here that happened here the people that were important to you from whatever religion that you were described to we're probably here at some point and like channel that and make your history that much deeper from coming here well one of the things I've said repeatedly no nation on earth more mirrors the United States in its origin and in its experience as Israel does we often talk about the special relationship we have with the UK and and we have a special relationship but remind people America was born out of a revolution to get away from the UK at that time we didn't want to be under the Kings Authority we wanted individual freedom and a lot of tea went into the Boston Bay a lot of tea and a lot of blood that went across the rest of the country in order to create this land that really can only be explained by God there's no way that those guys in the time of two hundred and forty three years ago declaring their independence from their mother country should have pulled that off these were people who were ill-equipped to fight a war they had muskets over their mantel better suited for hunting varmints and taken on the best-trained the best-equipped the best-dressed army in the history of the world of british army yet they had a cause and they were willing to die for it and that's what they had that the Brits didn't have the colonists were fighting for their cause the Brits were fighting for their King and when he came right down to it if the King won they weren't going to be any better off but the colonists knew that if they didn't win they were all gonna die maybe that's why the money says In God We Trust and it ought to Israel is a country that like the origins of the United States was created by people who came here to escape tyranny in many cases literally and I mean literally to prevent the existential annihilation of the last living Jew on earth and one reason that every American that every Christian should be adamant that Israel have its land protected and totally accepted is because the Holocaust would never have happened had there been a Jewish homeland had there been an Israeli army it never could have happened but it happened because there were no people who made it their priority to protect and preserve did you and so we kind of have I believe a global responsibility to never let the Holocaust happen again and the one way that happens is to make sure that Israel is able to live in the land that it is it's indigenous historic and Biblical homeland it's the only place the Jews have ever had a capital Israel is the is the only place well the only people that have ever called is roll home have been the Jews others have been maybe lived here but they lived here as people passing through or people who are here back end of another Empire yeah but it wasn't theirs and I've often when I take people here I'll go through neighborhoods that are largely dominated by Palestinians and then neighborhood stop it maybe by Israelis and Jews I'll say what do you notice that's different and it's very obvious and again it without an attempt to be offensive they'll say well in the Palestinian neighborhoods things are dirty and nasty and truck trash and debris just everywhere and on the even nice homes it's just junk playing around in the Jewish neighborhoods everything is pristine and carefully manicured and I said well if if the Palestinians really believe this is their land wouldn't they take better care of it the adage is nobody washes a rent because it's not yours you don't care if the oil gets changed you're gonna turn it back in and a week it's not yours you don't care that much if it's yours you care a lot about the appearance and the upkeep I just come here as an American and I make the casual observation some people really care about every piece of trash they care deeply about the greenery about trees and plants and not setting fires that decimate all and and keeping sidewalks clean and some people don't which reflects ownership which reflects a sense of this land is precious to me and I will reach over and pick up somebody else's trash to keep it clean and to keep it neat that says a lot interesting to hear your impressions as someone who visits a lot but doesn't live here even on something as mundane as you know putting a pot of flowers outside by your front door but it is powerful it's a great witness and testimony that my home has value to me and I want to present the very best side of it that I can and I want my children to play in a neighborhood that is clean and wholesome and free of broken glass and wrappers and and trash because if they grow up and that's what they see they'll think that their world really is just a place for them to dump the stuff they don't want I believe if we understand this is God's world he made it I don't own anything I'm simply temporarily a custodian of that which he has I sort of say you know my own sense of being a conservationist is that I follow the old Boy Scout rule leave your campsite in as good or better shape than you found it that's how we ought to look at it because this earth is not mine it's God's he made it he values it I need to value it so when sometimes people say well conservatives don't care enough about the environment I care very much I don't worship the environment I worship the God who made the environment and I believe he's given it to us for us to use and joy to take the fruits of it to live better lives but never to destroy it devalue it and ultimately leave it so that it is not fit for the next generation to enjoy and in a word we got to clean up our mess whatever mess it is that we make in our lives be it physical or emotional be a grown-up and clean it up and that's part of what we need to do and set that example for our children whether it's picking up the trash or if we get into some kind of relationship or situation that wasn't good fix it and show that way and the Israelis have a wonderful history they're not appreciated enough for this it doesn't matter who a person is in the Israeli justice system whether you're the Prime Minister are a peasant living on the street you're held to a legal standard a rule of law that's very important it's important for Americans to recognize that that's what makes us unique your name your occupation your family connections ultimately can't get you out of something that you're responsible for because the rule of law is supposed to be bigger than any of those things has it been practiced in perfectly oh yeah just some people get off the hook because they've got connections absolutely but by and large we have a system that forces us to live under the laws that we have accepted among ourselves as that social contract of life and I think people also don't appreciate how unusual Israel is in the Middle East when we talk about being the only democracy here it's more than just that it's more than just having elections it's we have that social contract in this country to behave a certain way living in a part of the world where behaviors are so out of control leaders to their own people when people can't believe their own leaders and just coming back to you being governor the basic I think the inherent strength of democracies is that people have faith in their leaders or should you feel at least their leaders may make mistakes but they do have the people's best interests at heart you may not agree with what they're doing but you shouldn't suspect your leader for trying to hurt his own people yet and the rest of the Middle East that's exactly what's happening people don't have that to lean on as you as having been clergymen and a governor have had that have people needing to trust you they will you were saying what you were doing is in their best interest and and I'm gonna hope that that's still what America stands for and what Israel stands for and it's a rarity that's not the common countries in the world are not like that one of the most impressive moments I had in my many visits to Israel was when during the Gaza war of 2014 I went to the southernmost airbase where most of the raids were launched to defend Israel against the totally senseless attacks by the rockets and terrorist activities of Hamas most Americans do not appreciate and the world certainly doesn't that the ethical approach of the Israeli army before they would go and drop a bomb on a building even though they knew that was a building that was housing terrorists that was housing the launch controls or perhaps even a launch site they would first fly over and drop leaflets they would then send a text message to every detect every phone in that area telling people we're going to take action on this building evacuate it don't be in it and then they would fly over and do what's called in a knocking on the roof which was to drop a non-lethal incendiary device on the roof to basically say we're serious this is the building it's it's argued then they would watch as a drone flew overhead and I watched the video in real time they would count the number of people that ran out of the building they knew pretty much through their intelligence how many people were in that building and they didn't launch the strike until they were confident that most of the human capital had been evacuated from that building Eve there's not another military force on God's earth that goes to that length to try to protect certainly innocent civilians but even to protect soldiers from something of that nature and they never I mean they never get credit for what they do we don't and that's why we so appreciate friends like you who see what I don't know why other people don't see it and maybe it's because you keep coming back so you know if it was different you would know by now like we couldn't keep our secrets from you maybe one or two times but you're back every couple months so you're seeing this country with all its flaws and all its imperfections and all of his strengths and to have a friend in you it's have an advocate in you is really a great thing and I just want to thank you for that well thank you and it has been a real joy visiting with you and I can't wait to come back all right governor Mike Huckabee thank you so much Yves Harrow on rejuvenation for the Land of Israel Network [Music] I have seen everything in the days of my vanity says the wise of all kings there's a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness and there's a wicked man who lives long in his evil he not overly righteous Orrin Solomon and be not overly wise why should you bring desolation upon yourself well I'm not worried that I'm over the righteous and I certainly don't think I'm overly wise but I am Rob Mike Feuer and this is the Jewish story Joanne Roth Mike foyer for the best Jewish history podcast the Jewish story