There will be a greater chance of ending the Mideast war and getting the hostages back under the incoming U.S. administration, because President-elect Donald Trump "has been very clear that you don't tolerate this kind of hideous violence," Mike Huckabee told Newsmax after it was revealed on Monday that an Israeli soldier previously believed to be among the living hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas was killed on Oct. 7, 2023, and his body taken by the terrorists.
The former Arkansas governor, who has been nominated by Trump as ambassador to Israel, told "Wake Up America" that the Biden administration "has done very little to push hard and to demand the release of those hostages."
Instead, Huckabee continued, "we are always giving instructions to Israel about how it ought to prosecute a war for its survival."
Huckabee said that the death of the IDF soldier, Cpt. Omer Maxim Neutra, 21, "hits close to home just having known his parents and knowing the grief for their son."
Huckabee said that he met the parents of Neutra, who was born in New York and later immigrated to Israel, on a flight to Tel Aviv, and that he has kept in touch with them and that he has been wearing a dog tag with Omer's name in solidarity with the family.
Huckabee said that despite Neutra's death, "we never give up hope, we always want to believe that there are still hostages alive. There are over a hundred there that are still unaccounted for."
Huckabee emphasized that "the sad part is that six of them who remain unaccounted for are Americans and we don't hear anything about them. This administration under Biden had done very little to push hard and to demand the release of those hostages. Instead we are always giving lectures to Israel about how they need to be more gentle, and I'm thinking, 'there was no gentility displayed on Oct. 7. None.'"
Huckabee reiterated that "one of the reasons I think many of us have been very frustrated is that it seems that this [Biden] administration has spent more time giving Israel instruction on how it ought to prosecute a war for its survival than we have put pressure on Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and most importantly the Iranian funders who have paid for all of this nonsense. And that is what needs to happen is a clear reckoning with the Iranian government: you paid for this and you need to pay for this. And that is what we have not seen."
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