Huckabee spoke exclusively to Breitbart News as part of the Breitbart Fight Club, a unique subscription service allowing participants access to pose questions to newsmakers and leaders from around the world.
Huckabee said that while there was hunger in Gaza, Israel was trying to make sure that Palestinians received food aid. Hamas, however, was more concerned with controlling and profiting from aid — and damaging Israel’s image — than it was in helping the Palestinian people whom it purports to represent.
He explained:
The simple truth is, Hamas is the one responsible for the starvation, to the degree that there is starvation. I point out that if you look at the people from Hamas, they aren’t starving. These are well-fed people. I even said to Piers Morgan last night on an interview with him, I said, you know, there may be starvation going on in Gaza, but it’s not Hamas. These people don’t need food. They need Ozempic. Because they’re incredibly well fed. They look like Southern farm boys. I’ll tell you, who’s starving: the [Israeli] hostages are starving. And it really ticks me off when these European leaders like [France’s Emmanuel] Macron and [the UK’s Keir] Starmer, you know, they’re putting all this pressure on Israel to drop food in for people in Gaza, and I want them to maybe put a little pressure on Hamas to start feeding the hostages, and tell them to stop making these hostages dig their own graves, which I find revolting and disgusting. And where’s the condemnation for that? If there’s hunger in Gaza, and I believe there is — I’ll be the first to say I think that in pockets, not everywhere, but in pockets, there’s hunger. But the reason is twofold. One, Hamas prevents people from getting to the feeding sites and shoots some of them — and I heard that from the Gazans themselves — but a lot of the food that goes into Gaza is stolen and looted by Hamas, who put it in warehouses, and then they turn around and sell it to people on the black market. Last year, Hamas made $500 million — that’s half a billion dollars — selling the relief food, the humanitarian food. By the United Nations’ own numbers — hese aren’t numbers I attributed to them, this is what they report — 88% of the food that they send into Gaza is stolen or looted. I think about that. 88% — that’s a 12% effective success rate and an 88% failure rate.
Huckabee also faulted the United Nations (UN) for worsening the problem, and effectively helping Hamas:
I’ve sent pictures on Twitter [X] that showed 900 trucks full of food sitting at the border that hadn’t gone in, thousands of pallets of food that was sitting in the sun, rotting, that hadn’t gone in. And the reason the UN and some of its affiliate organizations didn’t take it was because they said they are too principled to allow that food to go in with a military escort from the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]. And I’m thinking, “Okay, let me see if I get this right. You say that you’re really concerned about hunger, but you’re more concerned about who helps you get that food to people than whether or not the food gets to people. So somehow, you’re not convincing me that feeding hungry people is your primary objective. It’s control.” And it was really disgusting. And I said, if you don’t want the IDF to take you into a hot war zone where people are getting shot and shooting at you, who would you like to escort you in — a Girl Scout troop from Dubuque, Iowa? Would that make you feel more comfortable than having an army take you into a war zone? But it’s that kind of idiocy that just makes it hard to even have a rational discussion with some people. But I’m no fan of the UN, as you can probably tell, and the more I deal with them, the less I’m a fan of them, because I feel like that. They take billions of dollars of money, and I watch what they do with it, and it’s disgusting, and there should be accountability for it, and I don’t think the US should continue to fund some of these programs and projects they have, as ineffective as they are.
Huckabee recently visited the feeding sites of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.- and Israeli-backed alternative to the UN that has delivered well over 100 million meals directly to Palestinians in Gaza.
He told Breitbart News:
There’s been plenty of food that has gone into Gaza, but the reason a lot of people don’t have it is because Hamas stole it before they could ever get it, and Hamas is keeping the population from food if they can. They hate the feeding mechanism that the U.S. set up, which is controversial — it shouldn’t be controversial — the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, GHF, but it’s working, because instead of bringing in big trucks of food that are easily hijacked, food is put in boxes that will feed a family of five for eight-to-ten days. There’s not enough incentive for Hamas to steal a box of food. So the food distribution has been effective, and people can come and get their food. They take it home. They have food for a while. It’s got staple items that they’re able to use.
Huckabee added, by way of answering Israel’s critics: “When has a country been expected to feed the country that attacked them even while they were holding hostages and torturing those hostages. When does that happen?”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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