Trump picks Mike Huckabee, staunch ally of settlers, as ambassador to Israel

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday he was nominating former Republican presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as the next US ambassador to Israel. Over the years, Huckabee has voiced opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state and refers to the occupied West Bank by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria.

“Mike has been a great public servant, governor and leader in faith for many years,” Trump said in a statement. “He loves Israel and its people, and likewise, they love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring peace to the Middle East.”

A prominent Christian evangelist, Huckabee has led Evangelical Christian tours to Israel since 1981 and has long insisted on using the term Judea and Samaria to refer to the West Bank. The latter was captured by Israel in the 1967 war and is considered occupied territory under international law. 

Huckabee maintains strong ties with Israeli settlers and the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization representing the councils of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. During a 2018 visit to Israel, Huckabee expressed interest in purchasing a holiday home in Efrat, a settlement south of Jerusalem in the West Bank.

In a stop along his 2008 campaign trail while running for president at the time, Huckabee said “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian” and that using that identifier is “a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.” In 2015, he repeated the same thing after returning from a tour in Israel, doubling down: “The idea that they (Palestinians) have a long history, dating back hundreds of thousands of years, is not true.” Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has recently made similar statements. 

In recent months, Huckabee has been a fierce critic of any opposition to Israeli actions in the Gaza war. In an April 11 podcast discussion with the Jewish News Syndicate, Huckabee called the Israel-Hamas war “a conflict between good and evil” and said that Biden’s attempt to restrict Israel was “absolutely unconscionable.”  

“I’m so distressed that not only the president but [Secretary of State] Blinken and other members of the administration, members of Congress are turning their backs on the best friend we have not just in the Middle East but in the world. 

Huckabee, who has repeatedly referred to Israel’s war in Gaza as a zero-sum game and used heavily moralistic language when speaking about the matter, said, “This (Israel’s war in Gaza) is not a political, sociological, economic battle. This is a spiritual battle, this is as clear a definition between good and evil as we have seen in our lifetime, and one of the most profound in all of history.”  

Later, in June after Biden announced the terms of a cease-fire proposal, Huckabee said in an interview with NewsNation that “there’s no valid reason to have a cease-fire with Hamas. They’re not capable of having an honorable negotiation.” 

“This is like trying to negotiate with the Nazis in World War II. You just don’t,” he added. “You beat them. You defeat them. You eradicate them.” 

Huckabee’s nomination was celebrated by prominent far-right Israeli ministers, including Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.  

Smotrich wrote in a post on the social media platform X that Huckabee is “a consistent loyal friend” of Israel and “a supporter of the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank).”  

Ben-Gvir wrote a simpler message, posting Mike Huckabee’s name and a series of emojis: the US flag, a heart and the Israeli flag.