Speaking to supporters ahead of Monday’s “First in the Nation” Iowa Caucuses about the importance of Israel to religious freedom, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis expressed outrage there is a mosque in Bethlehem.
“That Holy Land is something that’s really meaningful to not just the United States, but all of Western civilization, because that was the foundation of everything that’s happened since then,” DeSantis claimed Sunday (video below). “So in that sense, I think it’s something that, that it is a special relationship between us and Israel.”
“And if you ever go and look at some of the holy sites, if Israel was not in control of those sites, you would not be able to exercise religious freedom and probably see – and in fact, you know, Bethlehem is actually in one of the Palestinian-Arab controlled areas,” continued the Florida governor, now in third-place after Donald Trump and Nikki Haley.
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“So if you go to Bethlehem, I mean, it’s honestly, I was really upset. It’s a pigsty. Trash everywhere. It was nasty,” DeSantis said. “They have a church, to you know where, I mean, I think it’s where they think Christ was born, they built this beautiful church. So they have it there and everything and you go and then you walk out, and they build this like massive mosque towering over it, because that’s just kind of what they do.”
“So all these key sites, if Israel was not a sovereign over them, you know, I don’t know that they would even last, if not. So I think they play an important role as a democracy in the Middle East but also caretaker of some of the most important history known to man.”
Florida Politics adds that DeSantis “has made Bethlehem bashing central to his campaign in the more than three months since Hamas attacked Israelis on Oct. 7.”
Watch below or at this link.