The Greater Israel Project

Here is the original interview, Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel granted to US journalist Tucker Carlson on the subject of Godfather dedicating the Middle East, from river Nile in Egypt to river Euphrate in Iraq, to the Jews as "God's Chosen People".

[Islam Times on February 23]

[Tribune, a Pakistani paper, on February 23]

[The Times of Israel on February 24, the neighbouring
article was earlier published on September 16, 2025]


Around 650 BC, the city-state of Sparta rose to become one of the major military powers in Greece, a status it remained until 371 BC. However, Sparta was sacked in 396 AD by the Visigothic king Alaric, and underwent a long period of decline into the medieval period. Modern Sparta is a provincial town and the seat of the Laconia regional administration.

You say Sparta ...
... I say Carthago

The date of its foundation (1949) given, Israel should better be compared with Carthago, another ancient Semitic civilization and warring empire. Founded by the Phoenicians in the 9th century BC, it became a major regional power in the 4th century. Following the Three Punic Wars, Carthago was finally destroyed by the surrounding Roman Empire in 146 BC, and who built the Thermal Baths of Antonius as an early holiday resort at its place, while leaving nothing else but a necropolis as a reminder of the Punic civilization.

In the early 1950ies, during the most dangerous years of the Cold War, Carthago became a symbol of doom in my country, which had just survived World War II. There was even a short-living campaign for peace in the situation of a threatening Atomic War. That campaign was launched by some reputed German intellectuals who had returned from US exile into the German Democratic Republic, which they imagined to be some kind of a "better Germany". Their slogan became: "The Great Carthago was still mighty after its 1st war. After its 2nd war, it was still inhabitable. After the 3rd war, however, Carthago could not be found any longer." That is the stance I learned from my father, long before I learned about Carthago and Sparta in my history lessons at school. Such progressive way of thought, however, was soon suffocated by East German authorities in the years that followed.