On February 20, 2026, the US Ambassador to Israel—Mike Huckabee—said on camera that Israel has a biblical right to the land “from the Nile to the Euphrates,” and when asked if Israel should take all of it: “It would be fine if they took it all.”
Grace Tame said “globalise the intifada” at a protest. Queensland wants to give her two years in prison.
Let’s apply the same scrutiny to Huckabee that we applied to Grace.
What Does “From the Nile to the Euphrates” Mean?
The Nile runs through Egypt. The Euphrates runs through Iraq and Syria. The territory between them includes all of Lebanon, all of Jordan, all of Syria, parts of Iraq, parts of Egypt, parts of Saudi Arabia.
Approximately 200 million people live there.
Huckabee said it would be fine if Israel took it all.
What Does “Took It All” Mean?
When Grace Tame said “intifada,” critics demanded to know: what does that really mean? What violence does it imply? What is she actually calling for?
Same question. What does “took it all” mean?
Does it mean military conquest? Israel would need to invade six sovereign nations. Egypt has 440,000 active military personnel. That’s regional war.
Does it mean annexation? What happens to the 200 million people living there? Israel has already approved a “Voluntary Emigration Bureau” for 2 million Gazans. Critics called it ethnic cleansing. Now multiply by 100.
Does it mean permanent occupation without citizenship? Israel already does that in the West Bank. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called it apartheid. Now extend it across six countries.
Every option involves violence on a scale that dwarfs anything Grace Tame has ever said or done.
The Comparison
Grace Tame said “globalise the intifada”—an Arabic word meaning “uprising,” used in 14 countries for non-violent and popular resistance movements. She’s a private citizen at a peaceful protest.
Response: 25,000-signature petition. ASIO investigation demanded. Criminal charges demanded. Two state governments moved to criminalise the words she said.
Mike Huckabee said Israel should take the land of six countries containing 200 million people, citing a 3,000-year-old religious text as a property deed. He’s the US Ambassador to Israel, backed by $3.8 billion in annual American military aid.
Response: Nothing.
Who Has More Power?
Grace Tame is an abuse survivor with a microphone at a rally.
Mike Huckabee is a diplomat with access to the most powerful military on earth.
Grace’s words are being criminalised. Huckabee’s aren’t being questioned.
Which statement is more likely to result in actual harm?
I know the objection. “You’re taking Huckabee literally but taking Grace figuratively. That’s the same thing the other side does.”
Yes. That’s the point.
If your instinct is that Huckabee obviously didn’t mean literal military conquest of six countries—that he was speaking loosely, theologically, hyperbolically—congratulations. You’ve just made Grace Tame’s argument for her.
Because that’s exactly the charity she was denied. “Intifada” means “uprising.” It’s been used for popular movements in 14 countries. But Grace didn’t get the benefit of context. She got the worst possible interpretation, applied with maximum force. Two years in prison.
And yes—intifada is a word that carries pain for many Jewish Australians. That pain is real. The First and Second Intifadas killed civilians. Nobody is asking anyone to forget that. But if we’re criminalising words based on their worst historical association, then Huckabee just endorsed a territorial claim that would require wars larger than anything the intifadas ever produced. And he did it as a sitting ambassador, not a woman at a rally.
The scrutiny goes both ways. Or it doesn’t go at all.
The critics of Grace Tame said: you can’t just look at the words. You have to look at what they mean. What they imply. What they lead to.
Agreed. Let’s do that.
“Globalise the intifada” means: extend the concept of popular uprising against oppression. A woman at a protest said it.
“It would be fine if they took it all—from the Nile to the Euphrates” means: the conquest or dispossession of 200 million people across six countries, justified by scripture. The US Ambassador to Israel said it.
One of those statements is criminal in Queensland.
Guess which one.