On Wednesday, former Arkansas GOP governor and staunch Evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee was confirmed as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel in a 53-46 vote mostly along party lines in the Senate, with Pennsylvania Democrat Senator John Fetterman being the lone Democrat to vote for him.
Confirmed, 53-46: Confirmation of Executive Calendar #67 Mike Huckabee to be Ambassador to the State of Israel.
— Senate Cloakroom (@SenateCloakroom) April 9, 2025
“Mike has been a lifelong friend of Israel and an ardent supporter and defender of Israel’s right to exist,” Arkansas GOP senator Tom Cotton stated in championing the nomination. “ In 1973, Mike made his first trip to Israel as a recent high school graduate. The experience of visiting the Biblical sites at the center of history had such a profound impact on the 17-year-old Mike Huckabee that he would go on to lead tens of thousands of people on similarly life-changing visits.”
In 2017, Huckabee made it clear that he believed that the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria — where virtually all the events recorded in the Bible took place — were part of the Jewish homeland, saying, “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.”
Even before President Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem in his first term, Huckabee said, “The only people who have ever had Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) as a capital have been the Jews. Nobody else has ever made this city a capital, ever. So it shouldn’t even be controversial. Now it will be, but it shouldn’t be.”
In 2015, Huckabee said bluntly, “I think it’s time for us to quit playing this pretentious game that there’s gonna be a two-state solution where both sides share the same country and real estate and streets ’cause they’re not. One of the sides, the Palestinians, continue to say that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist. You can’t forge an alliance with that.”
“We never can accept the notion that Israel will be divided,” he continued, saying the boundaries of Israel were given “not by the United Nations but by almighty God.”
