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America's Part in Greater Israel

"Greater Israel" (in Hebrew Eretz Yisrael HaShlema, "the Whole Land of Israel") is the idea that Israel's rightful borders are much larger than the ones the world recognizes. At its narrowest it means Israel plus the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights. At its widest it means the land promised in Genesis 15:18, "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates." The other pages in this section show what Israeli leaders have said and what the Israeli army and settlers have done.

This page asks a simpler question for an American reader: what does the United States have to do with it? The answer, on the public record, is a great deal. The man who represents the United States in Israel told a national audience that it "would be fine" if Israel took the whole biblical land. The Speaker of the House stood in a West Bank settlement and said the land belongs to the Jewish people "by right." Congress pays for the Israeli army, has moved bills to rename the West Bank in U.S. law and to fuse American and Israeli weapons systems, and has not voted on the war with Iran that the administration launched without its permission. American citizens live in the settlements. And American soldiers are in the region, with the draft machinery being rebuilt at home.

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED that the U.S. ambassador and the Speaker of the House have publicly endorsed a biblical right to the land; CONFIRMED that U.S. military aid and U.S. diplomatic cover sustain Israel's wars and its hold on the territories; STRONG that Washington's policy is captured by a lobby and a theology that put Israel's map ahead of American interests.

The ambassador: "It would be fine if they took it all"​

On 20 February 2026, in a two-hour interview recorded at Ben Gurion Airport, Tucker Carlson read Mike Huckabee the words of Genesis 15 and asked whether Israel had a right to the land "from the Nile to the Euphrates, which is once again basically the entire Middle East." Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, answered: "It would be fine if they took it all" (Mediaite, 20 February 2026). The Tucker Carlson Network clip of that sentence was viewed more than 11 million times (TCN on X, 20 February 2026). Türkiye Today called it "the most explicit public endorsement of maximalist biblical territorial claims ever made by a serving American diplomat," arriving "at a time when Israel is already expanding its military footprint into Syrian territory and lobbying Washington for a war against Iran" (Türkiye Today, 21 February 2026).

He went on to say Israel is "not asking to go back to take all of that," but only "to at least take the land that they now occupy." That second sentence is the narrow map, stated by the American ambassador as Israel's right. Days later, Israel's opposition leader, Yair Lapid, was asked about Huckabee's remark and said he wants the biblical borders "as broad as possible" (see Yair Lapid: "As Broad as Possible"). Fourteen Arab and Muslim governments condemned the ambassador's words in a joint statement.

Go deeper: Ambassador Huckabee: "It Would Be Fine If They Took It All"

The Speaker and Congress​

In August 2025, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson traveled to the Western Wall and to Ariel, a large Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, and said, as CAIR quoted him: "The Bible teaches that Judea and Samaria were promised to the Jewish people, and they belong to you by right" (CAIR, 25 September 2026). "Judea and Samaria" is the Israeli government's name for the West Bank. The third-ranking official in the U.S. line of succession put the country's weight behind the claim that Israel's governing coalition writes into its guidelines.

Congress has moved in the same direction. In January 2025, H.R. 902 was introduced to have U.S. agencies call the West Bank "Judea and Samaria" (Nerdeen Kiswani on X, 3 February 2025). A New York Times opinion piece in June 2026 reported that "legislation now moving through Congress would merge virtually all aspects of U.S. and Israeli defense technology" to "promote the long-term integration of joint capabilities" (New York Times opinion, 8 June 2026). Bills have been introduced to give U.S. military benefits to American citizens serving in the Israeli army (Ben Norton on X, 21 May 2024). Meanwhile, as Reason reported, "House Republican leaders canceled a vote Thursday night on a bill that called for halting President Donald Trump's war with Iran," a war "the Trump administration launched in February without getting permission from Congress" (Reason, 22 May 2026).

Go deeper: Congress and the Whole-Land Claim

The theology behind the policy​

Huckabee is a Christian Zionist: a Christian who believes the modern State of Israel fulfills biblical prophecy and that America is blessed for supporting it. He told Carlson the United States must "bless Israel," citing the promise that God "blesses those who bless Israel and curses those who curse Israel" (The New Arab, 21 February 2026). That belief has reached the war itself. The Executive Intelligence Review reported "over 110 complaints in the war's first 48 hours" from service members whose officers told them Trump had been "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon" (EIR, 8 March 2026).

Go deeper: Christian Zionism, the Bible, and the Iran War

The money and the settlers​

The United States gives Israel about $3.8 billion in military aid a year. The historian Zachary Foster summed up the double standard in November 2023: "if you say, 'between the river & the sea, there will be only Jewish sovereignty,' (Likud Charter) you get $3.8B/yr in military aid from the US. if you say, 'between the river & the sea, Palestine will be free,' you are censured from congress, fired from CNN or banned from X" (Zachary Foster on X, 20 November 2023). Chris Hedges counted $17.9 billion in U.S. military aid from October 2023 to October 2024, even though, he wrote, "61 percent support ending weapons shipments to Israel" (Chris Hedges on X, 7 January 2025).

American citizens are part of the settlement project itself. Huckabee, before he became ambassador, claimed about 700,000 Americans live in the settlements; a Recognise Palestine post answered that a figure of 60,000 to 100,000 is more credible (Facebook, Recognise Palestine, May 2025). Either way, the settlers include many Americans, and the Globe and Mail noted that many "speak English with North American accents" (Globe and Mail, 24 April 2026). U.S. Representative Ro Khanna said he was detained in the West Bank by Israeli settlers "armed with U.S.-made rifles" (X search snippet, July 2026).

Go deeper: Americans in the Settlements and American Money

Why it matters to an American family​

The political scientist John Mearsheimer, discussing Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick's book Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power, put the problem in two levels, as Akbar Ganji summarized him: the lobby "has lost control of the discourse; it has not lost control of policy." The book's chapter on Israel as a "crazy state" describes "unlimited aims, Greater Israel, wrecking powerful neighbors, wars, assassinations of leaders" (Akbar Ganji's summary on X, 9 September 2026). The commentator Ana Kasparian said the same thing in plainer words to Tucker Carlson: whoever Americans elect, "they're going to get dog-walked by whoever the prime minister of Israel is at the time" (Matt Gaspers on X, 26 July 2025).

Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in July 2026: "Our military has been degraded to the Strait of Hormuz police because Trump is controlled by Miriam Adelson and Israel" (Marjorie Taylor Greene on X, 20 July 2026). The same Congress that will not vote on the Iran war is building the machinery to compel young Americans to serve: see Law Passed to Force Citizens into the Draft and American Soldiers on the Ground in Iran. The question for a parent is whether a map drawn from Genesis 15, endorsed by the U.S. ambassador and the Speaker of the House, is worth a son or daughter.

Status: Mike Huckabee, Tucker Carlson, Mike Johnson, Yair Lapid, Ro Khanna, Zachary Foster, Chris Hedges, John Mearsheimer, Eli Clifton, Ian Lustick, Ana Kasparian, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Miriam Adelson, and Donald Trump are alive. Nothing on this page states that any of them committed a crime.

Sources​

Research captures: twitter/t19__v221.md, twitter/t19__v224.md, twitter/t19__v226.md, twitter/t20__v238.md, twitter/t21__v250.md, twitter/t22__v255.md, twitter/t22__v259.md, twitter/t22__v262.md, twitter/t29__v343.md, twitter/t29__v346.md

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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