Huckabee in Queens: No apology

Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, visiting Jewish supporters at a parlor meeting fundraiser in Jamaica Estates, Queens, Monday night, doubled down on his warning over the weekend that the Iranian nuclear deal would “take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven.”

“The reason I invoked the language of the Holocaust is because the Iranian government invoked that very language in their threat to destroy Israel and America,” the former Arkansas governor told supporters who crowded the home of Dr. Joseph and Karen Frager.

President Obama, speaking during a visit to Ethiopia on Monday, said Huckabee’s comments “would be ridiculous if they weren’t so sad.” 

“What’s ridiculous is that our government has made a deal with a country that’s spent 36 years under the ayatollahs threatening to kill every last Jew and every American and wipe Israel off the face of the map,” Huckabee told the Queens gathering. “Are we supposed to pretend that they don’t mean it, and that they might not do it?”

“I stood at the doors of the ovens in Auschwitz three times, and every time I am reminded that this happened because there were people across the world who looked the other way and refused to believe that such a thing was even possible,” he said.

“These are not words that I would use or that I think are appropriate,” said Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

Republican Jeb Bush said “the use of that kind of language is just wrong.” Democrat Hillary Clinton said she was “offended personally” by Huckabee’s comments.

Most of those who attended Monday’s parlor meeting were from Queens, but some came from elsewhere on Long Island and New Jersey, including Lawrence Mayor  Martin Oliner, Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Hampton Synagogue, and a group from Great Neck accompanied activists Dr. Paul and Drora Brody.