In a contentious interview with Ambassador Mike Huckabee, Tucker Carlson asserted that the Bible envisions Israel’s borders stretching from the Nile River to the Euphrates. This would include territory now comprising Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan. Carlson intended this to be embarrassing to Huckabee’s Christian Zionism.
But instead, it would be a vast improvement for residents of a region long defined by fragmentation, repression, and violence if they lived in autonomous regions under Israeli security control.
Across the swath of land Tucker identifies as Biblical Israel, millions today live under regimes that restrict basic freedoms and perpetrate violence on their people. By contrast, Israel is a free country with protections for speech, religion, and human rights. According to the World Happiness Report, Israel consistently places among the top ten countries on earth in life satisfaction, while the surrounding states rank toward the bottom of the list.
That disparity invites comparison.
Consider the Druze, a small ethno-religious minority spread across Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. While the Druze in Israel are citizens, fully integrated into the state and serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, many Druze in Syria have been injured or killed by government forces. Indeed, Syrian Druze communities have already requested to be annexed to Israel.
Syria is a stark case of state failure across the board. For decades it was run by the Assad family, a regime famed for disappearing citizens into secret prisons, torture, extrajudicial killings, rape, and using chemical weapons against their own civilians.
Under the leadership of President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a “former” al-Qaeda leader also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, Syria is now undergoing a process of radical Islamization. Consequently, persecution of and violent attacks on Christians, Druze, and Alawites has skyrocketed.
In Lebanon, at one point a majority of the population was Christian. Now it is only a third. That’s because Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and others, has a stranglehold on the country’s politics and security.
“For Hezbollah, Iran’s interests come first; it doesn’t care about the chaos it ignites in Lebanon,” a Lebanese journalist based in Beirut recently said. “The suffering of the people and the hardships inflicted on Lebanese society are only a secondary concern.” Recent years have seen the collapse of the Lebanese economy and mismanagement contributing to the 2020 Beirut port blast that devastated the city.
The Kurdish people remain divided among Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, without a sovereign state of their own. This fragmentation has left them vulnerable to shifting powers and periodic crackdowns. During the independence referendum in Iraq’s 2017 Kurdistan Region, some Kurds flew Israeli flags. Opponents of Kurdish autonomy claimed an independent Kurdish region would be a “second Israel” but there would be no need for that if the Kurds were in an autonomous region under greater Israeli security control.
Egypt, putatively a pillar of regional stability, is governed by a military regime that took power in a coup. According to Freedom House, “meaningful political opposition is virtually nonexistent, as expressions of dissent can draw criminal prosecution and imprisonment. Civil liberties, including press freedom and freedom of assembly, are tightly restricted. Security forces engage in human rights abuses and extrajudicial killing with impunity.”
It is illegal for Egyptian Christians to build or even repair churches and some have been arrested for peacefully protesting this fact.
Jordan, frequently described as “moderate,” is actually a hereditary dictatorship where the king has the authority to appoint and dismiss the prime minister, judges, and parliaments at will. There is no true political representation, no free press, no free speech.
By contrast, Israel guarantees freedom of worship for multiple religions, protects an independent judiciary, and sustains a vibrant press. These features contribute to high levels of well-being and economic development relative to neighboring states. Israel has a per capita GDP that is roughly ten times or more that of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, or Jordan.
Yes, Carlson irrationally obsessed with his hatred of Israel, and was named an Antisemite of the Year. But even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut. And in this case, even a nut can sometimes be right.
Genesis 15:18 does describe God’s covenant with Abram, later renamed Abraham, saying, “to your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates.” Most experts believe the “river of Egypt” refers to the Wadi al-Arish in the northern Sinai, but even if it is the Nile, as Tucker thinks, that’s fine too. Just as Ambassador Huckabee said.
Obviously Jews believe in the divinity of the Hebrew Bible, but so do Evangelical Christians like Huckabee, as well as Catholics and Orthodox Christians. We all believe that God wrote those words. And of course, God is right. Israel should control that region.
In this case, non-religious, atheist, secular, or even anti-religious observers can plainly see that it would best serve the aspirations of the many communities in the region for safety, dignity, and freedom, if they were to live in some sort of autonomous regions under Israel’s security control. This is obvious and true.
Even if Tucker said it.
S.C. Legoni is the pseudonym of a writer, international conflict analyst, and amateur theologian.
