President-elect Donald Trump nominated former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024. Huckabee is seen here at a Trump campaign event in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 29, 2024. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Israel.
“There is no greater supporter [of Israel] and nobody who has a greater understanding of our two nations’ unbreakable bond,” his daughter, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said Tuesday. “There’s probably a little bit of bias, but there’s no one who will do a better job in this role.”
In a statement on Trump’s social media platform, the president-elect called Huckabee “a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years.”
“He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”
Huckabee has no foreign policy experience, but he has visited Israel dozens of times and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His daughter said Tuesday she went with him on one of those trips when she was 11, “and it literally changed my life.” Huckabee frequently leads tours of the Jewish nation and has one scheduled for this February.
Huckabee, like many evangelical Christians, has been a staunch supporter of Israel for decades. He’s opposed U.S. efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which attacked the country on Oct. 7, 2023. In June, he said “we have no valid reason” to do so because Hamas isn’t “capable of having an honorable negotiation.”
Huckabee has also opposed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine question and made his opinions clear in a CNN segment in January 2017, shortly before Trump took office for his first term. In a visit to a new Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Huckabee said he rejects the use of the word “settlements.”
“There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria,” he told CNN, using the biblical terms. “There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
Huckabee made those remarks before Trump made the controversial decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which Israel considers an undivided capital but which Palestinians lay claim to its eastern half.
In Little Rock, a Jewish group that has sought reconciliation with Palestinians issued a statement Tuesday registering its opposition to Huckabee’s nomination.
“Huckabee’s support for Israel is deeply rooted in Christian Zionism, a theology that sees Israel and the Jewish people as a vehicle for the fulfillment of Christian prophecy,” the group, Taste of Olam Haba, said in its statement.
In this light, Jews “are seen, not as a diverse community with our own intrinsic values and beliefs, but rather as a means to hasten the return of a Jesus and a Christian supremacist narrative,” the statement said.
“It is clear: Mike Huckabee is no friend of the Jewish people,” Taste of Olam Haba said in the statement.
Stephanie Gray, a spokesperson for the group, said in an interview that Huckabee’s nomination undermines the work the organization has been doing to promote peace and understanding among people of different faiths.
Another group, Little Rock Peace for Palestine, also issued a statement opposing Huckabee’s nomination.
As a Christian Nationalist and Christian Zionist, the group said, Huckabee does not support “Palestinians’ right to self-determination, right to return, or any equality under the law.”
Huckabee’s appointment as ambassador to Israel would “stand in the way of diplomatic efforts aimed at creating a sustainable peace that acknowledges the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians,” the statement read.
Huckabee served as governor from 1996 through 2006 and ran for president in the 2008 and 2016 Republican primaries.
An ordained Southern Baptist pastor, Huckabee hosts a talk show on Trinity Broadcasting Network. He previously hosted shows on Fox News and was syndicated on Cumulus Media Networks.
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