Trump picks settlement backer Mike Huckabee as next US ambassador to Israel
Ex-Arkansas governor has visited Israel often since 1973; slammed Biden’s pressure on Israel to moderate war in Gaza, opposes Palestinian nationalism; Steven Witkoff named Mideast envoy
US President-elect Donald Trump announced his decision on Tuesday to nominate former Arkansas governor and longtime backer of the settlement enterprise Mike Huckabee as the next US ambassador to Israel.
“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!” Trump said in a statement.
Huckabee, 69, has been one of the evangelical Christian community’s most ardent supporters of Israel. He is the first non-Jew nominated for the post since James Cunningham was tapped by then-US president George W. Bush in 2008.
Huckabee, who first visited Israel in 1973, has gone on to lead several tour groups in the years that followed, frequently advertising the missions on conservative-leaning news outlets.
In December, he toured Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the communities near the Gaza border that were shattered during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught when some 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and 251 people were kidnapped to Gaza.
Huckabee described the experience of walking through the kibbutz — where dozens of the residents were murdered during Hamas’s brutal attack — as a “gut punch” that reinforced his resolve to express solidarity with the Israeli people.
He has called Israel’s claim to the West Bank stronger than American ties to Manhattan and laid bricks in 2018 as ground was broken on a new housing complex in the settlement of Efrat.
During a 2017 visit to the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, Huckabee told reporters: “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.”
האקבי, שגריר ארה"ב בישראל שמינה טראמפ כעת, במסיבת עיתונאים ב-2017: "אין דבר כזה כיבוש. אין דבר כזה התנחלות. אין דבר כזה גדה מערבית, זו יהודה ושומרון ולישראל יש זכות עליה" pic.twitter.com/Sz0RL0Ap6H
— Noam Ihmels | נעם אימלס (@NoamIhmels) November 12, 2024
More recently, he has criticized outgoing US President Joe Biden for pressuring Israel to moderate its conduct in the resulting war against the terror group in Gaza.
“If a person is pro-Israel, how can you be pro-Biden because the Biden administration has made it very clear they will make concessions to Hamas,” Huckabee said in an interview in March on News Nation.
Huckabee is also a bitter opponent of Palestinian nationalism. “I have to be careful saying this because people get really upset, there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, told a rabbi in Massachusetts in 2008, according to the New Yorker. “That’s been a political tool to try to force land away from Israel.”
In 2015, in a similar vein, he told the Washington Post, “The idea that they have a long history, dating back hundreds or thousands of years, is not true.”
Huckabee also takes a hawkish view on Israel’s archnemesis Iran, which in 2015 he referred to as a “snake” that cannot be trusted and should be “killed.”
Huckabee served as Arkansas governor from 1996 to 2007. He fell short in bids for the Republican nomination for president in 2008 and 2016.
His daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is the current governor of Arkansas. She served as Trump’s White House press secretary from 2017 to 2019.
David Friedman, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Israel in his first term, said Tuesday he was “thrilled” by Trump’s selection of Huckabee.
Samaria Regional Council mayor Yossi Dagan spoke with Huckabee after the news broke, and congratulated him on his nomination.
“The US has won and the State of Israel has won too. Mike Huckabee is a true leader, a smart man,” Dagan said in a statement that highlighted the nominee’s cooperation with the settlement movement.
Special envoy Witkoff
Later Tuesday, Trump announced the appointment of real estate investor Steven Witkoff to be his special envoy to the Middle East.
Witkoff has been Trump’s regular golf partner and was seen as a conduit to the Jewish business community during his winning presidential campaign.
“Steve is a Highly Respected Leader in Business and Philanthropy, who has made every project and community he has been involved with stronger and more prosperous. Steve will be an unrelenting Voice for PEACE, and make us all proud,” Trump said in a statement.
Witkoff will fill a role that did not exist in the current administration, as US President Joe Biden believing that the conditions weren’t in place for another high-stakes Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative and instead sought to prioritize other foreign policy issues.
Witkoff is not known to have any diplomatic or Middle East experience, but those have not been criteria for previous Trump appointments. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who similarly lacked such experience, managed to broker the Abraham Accords during the Republican politician’s first term as president.
Huckabee and Witkoff are the latest in a series of appointments announced by Trump this week, including New York Rep. Elise Stefanik for the role of ambassador to the UN and Rep. Mike Waltz for the role of national security adviser.
