Mike Huckabee, 69, the American ambassador to Israel, was sworn in to office on April 10. Arriving in Israel days later, he headed directly to the Kotel, the Temple Prayer Wall in Jerusalem. There he prayed, then placed a handwritten prayer from US President Donald Trump, for peace in Israel and the return of the hostages, between the stones of the Wall.
An ardent supporter of Israel and a self-described Zionist, Huckabee has visited the Jewish state a hundred times.
He served as governor of the state of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007 and was a presidential candidate in 2008 and 2016. His daughter Sarah Huckabee Saunders, President Trump’s press secretary during his first term, is the current Arkansas governor.
At age 17, he entered the ministry, pastoring three Southern Baptist congregations between 1972 and 1992.
In 1969, he entered the field of broadcasting, eventually hosting various national TV and radio programs with political commentary and religious discussion till last year. He has authored several books.
At the Kotel, he shared his views with the press:
“It gives me an extraordinary sense of personal joy to have been named by the president as an Evangelical Christian believer to take this post. To be honest, I was a little concerned that maybe there would be some resistance to that on behalf of Israeli people and Jewish people but what I found is just the opposite and many people, my Jewish friends, have expressed this over and again, that if I were Jewish and came as ambassador they’d say: ‘Well, of course he supports Israel. He’s Jewish. He doesn’t have a choice.’
“I say to them, ‘I have a choice,’ and I make my choice to support Israel and to show my friendship that has existed, by the way, for 52 years from my very first trip here, which was in 1973.”
Commenting on the conflict with Hamas in Gaza, he called them “savages that massacred in the most vicious way innocent civilians. They did not [only] attack soldiers, they attacked civilians, they attacked women, children, babies, helpless elderly people. They brought this upon themselves.
“Everything that people see there is not the result of anything other than the vicious hatred that Hamas harbored and carried out on October 7th, and they are paying the price, and tragically so many innocent people are paying the price, for the sins and the evil of these monsters of Hamas.”
Concerning the relationship between Israel and the United States, he stated: “Israel is an incredibly important ally to us. People sometimes only think that Israel benefits from the United States.
“The truth is the United States benefits a great deal from Israel and not just militarily. We certainly benefit from the technology, from the innovation, from defense systems that were developed here, but there’s a much more important and long-lasting side of where Americans benefit in agriculture, technology, medical advancement. So it is not a one-way street. The United States and its citizens are directly the beneficiaries of some of the extraordinary achievements and accomplishments and innovations of people here in Israel.”
On the threat posed by Iranian attempts to develop nuclear weapons: “The president himself has made it very clear Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. They will not be in a position where they can threaten the peace not just of Israel but all the people of the rest of the world. Let’s never forget that the Iranians have not simply threatened Israel with extinction, which they have repeatedly over 46 years, but they have also threatened the United States. They don’t just say, ‘Death to Israel.’ they say, ‘Death to America.’
“There’s an old saying that when people tell you over and again, they’re going to kill you, you might want to take them seriously. So I don’t think this is just about Israel. Israel has often been called the Little Satan and the US the Great Satan. I’d put it in simpler terms: For the Iranians, Israel is the appetizer, and the US is the entrée. Whatever happens at the hands of the Iranians to Israel is intended for those of us in the United States.”
He has been consistently strident. In 2017, he told CNN’s Oren Lieberman: “I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria. There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. 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” (“Trump picks Mike Huckabee to serve as US ambassador to Israel,” CNN, November 13, 2024).
He continued: “It is a land that is occupied with the people who have had a rightful deed to the place for 3,500 years, since the time of Abraham, so a lot of the terms that maybe the media would use, or even people against Israel would use, are not terms that I employ, because I want to use terms that live from time immemorial and those are the terms like ‘promised land’ and ‘Judea, Samaria’. These are biblical terms and those are important to me.”
We are grateful for Christians in government who express their friendship to Israel so unwaveringly.