Middle East ......

As Israel prepares to receive the remains of eight of the 26 hostages listed for imminent release by Hamas, U.S. Ambassador to Israel nominee Mike Huckabee told Newsmax on Wednesday that it isn't "a big surprise" that the Palestinian militant group killed some of the captives held in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023.

"These people have been tortured," Huckabee said on "Wake Up America." "They've been treated horribly. Let's keep in mind, they were innocent people, taken hostage, not by a government, but by a terrorist group. Criminals, thugs, savages. These are not people that you can sit down and make nice with because they don't know how to do that. Even as recently as a week ago, their leaders are still saying that they are proud of what they did Oct. 7. They want to do some more of it. So, any sense that these are folks that you can deal with in some honorable way, let's forget about that. These are not those kind of people. And I hope that the world wakes up and recognizes that Israel ultimately really has to completely eradicate Hamas. They can never govern Gaza. They can never govern anything. And we need to make sure that the world understands that there will be a heavy price to pay for what they did that can't be undone."

President Donald Trump invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet with him at the White House next week. Netanyahu will be the first foreign leader to meet with Trump in the Oval Office since his second term began and Huckabee said that the meeting "sends the message that President Trump is the most pro-Israel president in American history."

"No one has been like him," Huckabee said. "If you go back to his first term, he moved the embassy to Jerusalem, recognized the Golan Heights as the territory of Israel as it should be. Recognized that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state. He took away the sanctions, and he's already done that since he's been president this time, about people moving into Judea and Samaria. There are so many ways in which President Trump has demonstrated his support for the Jewish state. I think it's important that Americans understand, look, this is about supporting the only democracy in the Middle East.

"This is a country that shares intelligence, technology with us, military capacity," he continued. "It's not just that it's good for Israel. It's good for us, too. And a lot of Americans do not appreciate what we benefit from in our relationship to Israel. But the most important thing, Israel still has free speech. They have free elections. They mirror the kind of world of Western civilization that we have. It's not a dictatorship. It's not apartheid. And we need to do all that we can to stand with a true ally and also a government and a country that is made up of people who follow a moral code, a moral law. And like us, theirs comes from their Jewish tradition, just like ours comes from our Judeo-Christian tradition of believing there's a God. That's something we ought to celebrate and recognize, and we ought to be able to be supportive of it."