New US envoy: Israel’s struggle against its enemies is a ‘battle between heaven and hell’
Mike Huckabee, an Evangelical, declares Israel ‘a chosen place for a chosen people,’ lauds Trump for reversing Biden’s ‘ridiculous policies,’ says his top goal is returning the hostages
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
In an overtly religious speech that was explicitly eschatological in tone, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee declared Monday that “Israel is a chosen place for a chosen people” and that the Jewish state’s struggle against its enemies constitutes a “battle between heaven and hell, between good and evil, between light and darkness.”
Addressing a conference hosted by the Jewish News Syndicate in Jerusalem, the former Arkansas governor praised US President Donald Trump for having “reversed a lot of the ridiculous policies of the previous administration.”
One such policy, Huckabee said, was “to not give Israel the necessary tools to fight a war against the worst savages that we have seen, not just in our century, but perhaps in human history” — apparently referring to Hamas.
Stating he is “convinced today that what the world needs is a real dose of understanding what people are up against, who live in this, the most contested piece of real estate on God’s entire planet,” Huckabee declared that Israel is engaged in a conflict against “people who are evil.”
“This is not a geopolitical struggle. The left versus the right, the liberal versus the conservative. This is a vertical battle between heaven and hell, between good and evil, between light and darkness,” Huckabee said.
“And one of the reasons that I am so grateful to God to be here is to make sure that not just here in Israel, but across the world, people understand that the United States of America and President Trump stand for good and not evil.”
— U.S. Embassy Jerusalem (@usembassyjlm) April 28, 2025
Huckabee said that when asked about his primary objectives, “the first thing is let’s get the hostages home.”
Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 24 hostages believed to be alive, and the bodies of 35 more who have been confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces. They include the body of a soldier killed in 2014; the rest were abducted from Israel during the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, which started the ongoing war.
“Let’s get them home now, every last one of them,” the US ambassador said, adding that Americans need to understand that “America benefits greatly from its relationship to Israel,” a state which is “a chosen place for a chosen people, for a chosen purpose.”
“And I say that not because I’m Jewish, I say it because it’s true,” Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, asserted.
“And I realize there are a lot of people who don’t want to get into the spiritual side of things and just sort of dismiss that. But, folks, there is no explanation for the United States of America other than that there was a God who intervened on behalf of those incredible colonists who truly thought that it was better to die than it was to live as slaves and under a tyranny.”
Turning to the issue of Jerusalem, Huckabee said that the land was gifted to the biblical forefathers thousands of years ago and that “if there ever was a time that the city of Jerusalem should be absolutely recognized as the indisputable, undivided capital of the Jewish people, it is now.”
“And I’m glad Donald Trump, the president, admitted and acknowledged that,” he added, referring to Trump’s 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which bucked decades of international policy, and subsequent relocation of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Times of Israel Community.