WASHINGTON -- Former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and conservative group Concerned Women for America joined forces to sponsor a "Stand with Israel" rally on Capitol Hill Sunday.
CWA's president Penny Nance kicked off the rally explaining how it was birthed last year while she was in Israel. She came to see why it's important to support the Jewish nation today as it faces enemies who want to wipe it out.
Just after visiting Jerusalem's
Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, she asked herself if she would have supported Jews during World War II when they also faced the threat of extinction.
"If I had been alive during the Holocaust, what would I have done?" Nance told the rally crowd. "Would I have been one of those people, one of those Christians, who just turned away and turned a blind eye to the evil that was right before me?"
Many of the speakers at the rally pointed out that supporting Israel is certainly a moral choice. But they also insisted it's in America's own best interest because if Israel's enemies ever succeed in destroying it, they'll then turn all their guns on America and the West.
Huckabee said he believes God will save Israel from destruction, but ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran still want to wipe it out. He warned they wouldn't stop there.
"Do you honestly think that if they were to achieve that, that they would say, 'Well, that's it. We're done?'" Huckabee asked.
"Israel isn't the ultimate target. We are. Let us never forget it," he admonished the crowd gathered on Capitol Hill.
CBN Terrorism Analyst Erick Stakelbeck talked about how Iran is developing ICBM missiles that will be able to cross oceans by 2015. He explained why this Persian superpower that's threatened to destroy nearby Israel needs intercontinental missile.
"Israel is the little Satan, a bump on the road to the Great Satan -- us. Their words, not mine," Stakelbeck said of the Iranian leaders and their fellow radicals. "So if you think you can ignore ISIS, ignore Iran, and leave Israel to its own devices, you're sadly mistaken."
CWA also wanted to demonstrate that there are many young concerned women for Israel. They brought three of them to the podium.
One was Raquel Minka, a Baltimore Jew in her 20s who when she heard this July there was to be an anti-Israel protest in her neighborhood, organized a counter-rally. It ended up having hundreds more participants than the anti-Israel protest.
To Minka, this struggle is personal.
"My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. They fought the fight," she told CBN News. "My dad is a wounded IDF [Israel Defense Forces] veteran. He fought the fight. And now I'm doing the same. I'm taking it upon myself to also fight."
Bill Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard, is acknowledged as one of the most vocal and ardent neo-conservatives, who advocates an activist American military presence in the world.
Before taking the stage at the rally, Kristol told CBN News it's essential America both ensure Israel's survival and stand in the Middle East and fight.
"We know what a world without Israel and with an America that's weak and withdrawn looks like," he said. "And that's the world of 1939 -- 75 years ago. And that's a world that leads to a world war, and that's a world that leads to a Holocaust."
Kristol said President Barack Obama's non-interventionism has led to worse outcomes than George W. Bush's much-maligned interventionism.
"Almost 200,000 dead in Syria. ISIS on the rampage. Iran close to nuclear weapons: it's unbelievably dangerous for Israel; it's unbelievably dangerous for us," Kristol said, surveying the present crises.
"If Iran gets nuclear weapons, that's a threat to Israel. But it's a threat to the U.S., too," he continued. "So I think we are seeing how dangerous the world can be when America, unfortunately, looks weak."
