WASHINGTON — A second Donald Trump administration will have no “mixed messaging” toward Israel, the president-elect’s pick to be US ambassador to the Jewish state told The Post.
“The biggest challenge is that the message that our nation has given to Israel has often been very mixed,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said in his first one-on-one interview since Trump announced him as his choice for Israel envoy Nov. 12.
“I’ve been very grateful that President Biden has often said that ‘We stand with Israel,’ you know, ‘They are our ally,’ and ‘We’re ironclad in our commitment,’” the 69-year-old added. “But then, within a day or so, we would hear we’re going to withhold selling arms to Israel unless they prosecute the war in Gaza the way we think it should be prosecuted.
“Well, those are two very different things, and they can’t be the same. So what I’m really confident of in President Trump is, there will be a consistent policy, a consistent message and a consistent action to go with that.”
Straight talk
Huckabee added that he believes Trump’s leadership will secure the return of the remaining 101 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza more than 13 months since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that killed an estimated 1,200 people — including dozens of Americans.
“We should have used all of the US force to publicly demand release of all hostages, but especially the four Americans still held. And applied maximum pressure to Iran and Qatar to demand their release,” Huckabee told The Post, saying the stalemate has been “especially frustrating to watch.”
“[It] would not surprise me if there is a breakthrough in light of Trump’s election,” the ambassador-designate added, “because they know Trump doesn’t play around.”
Huckabee has long been a supporter of Israel, making dozens of trips to the Jewish state, and advocating against a so-called “two-state solution,” once saying during his 2008 presidential campaign “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian … That’s been a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”
“They’re in a fight for their very existence,” Huckabee said of the Israelis this week. “So their battle is not so that they can lower their taxes and, you know, maybe have a little more prosperity and take a better vacation.
“Theirs is so their kids actually will survive their childhood and won’t be bombed out of existence.”
That stance is why Huckabee’s selection by Trump was welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters.
“Looking at the appointments President Trump is making — people who are very, very connected to Israel, very supportive, understand very clearly what the good guys and who are the bad guys, and they understand Israel’s national security needs,” retired Israel Defense Forces Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi told The Post on Wednesday. “So in this sense, I’m very, very optimistic.
“When I saw he appointed [Huckabee] to be as ambassador in Israel, I think this sends a very strong message of what kind of relationship this administration is going to have for Israel, and it’s going to be a very close one,” he added.
A biblical passion
Huckabee’s passion for Israel stems from his own longstanding love affair with the Holy Land, even leading tour groups to the region as recently as this spring.
Though he left the Baptist pulpit decades ago, Huckabee’s faith is still a grounding force behind his policy. In explaining his views on a single-state solution, he told The Post that true peace in the Middle East can only happen if Israel is allowed “to protect the land that God gave them 3,500 years ago.”
“They asked for no more, but they asked for no less, and they have a right to expect that.”
One of the great ironies of the 2024 election is that after pro-Palestinian activists hounded both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the campaign trail, voters elected a president with Jewish grandchildren who chose one of the most fervent supporters of Israeli sovereignty to represent his administration there.
To illustrate Israel’s precarious situation, Huckabee told The Post he often takes tourists into Arab-run stores to look at maps of the region.
“I’ll pick up a map, and I’ll hand it to them, and I’ll say, ‘Show me where Israel is on the map.’ And they look and they say, ‘It’s not here. How come?’” he recounts. “I say, ‘Because they don’t believe it exists.’”
“It’s hard to have a [two-state] solution if your neighbor doesn’t think you should — not only they don’t like you living there, they don’t think you have a right to live there. That’s a big deal. And so that’s what they’re up against.”
Handling Iran
During his potential ambassadorship, Huckabee said he is “very excited about the prospects” of expanding the Abraham Accords, something he called “a touchstone of President Trump’s first term.”
The agreements — which the US mediated in 2020 and 2021 between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan — established peace between the countries, including formal recognition of Israel by the Arab nations.
To continue that progress, Huckabee said, he aims to create “more alliances with additional Gulf states and more of the Arab partners in the Middle East.”
“There’s no reason that this should not advance with more and more of the countries around the Middle East recognizing that Israel is no threat to them,” he said. “The only real threat is the Iranian government, and it’s the only one that has determined that it wants to destroy not only Israel, but even its Arab neighbors as well.”
Through his diplomatic work, Huckabee aims to push greater acceptance of Israel in the Middle East — and by doing so, snuff out the region’s tolerance of Iran.
“There needs to be a universal willingness on the part of all civilized nations to really stand against what is nothing short of evil,” he said. “The massacre of civilians on October 7 is just a horrific reminder of the degree to which some of these people will go to make a point — and it is not the actions of people who are civilized.
“So I think the Abraham Accords, which was an extraordinary historic moment, have potential to be expanded and there to be greater avenues of commerce, trade, tourism, and ultimately, with all of that comes peace,” he said.
Huckabee warns that Iran’s ambitions do not stop at Israel, but extend to taking down the United States.
“If somebody points a gun to your head and says they’re going to shoot you, you might want to believe them, and what they’ve said, historically and consistently, is that Israel is the little Satan, and the US is the great Satan,” he said. “They first want to get rid of the little Satan, and then their next target is the great Satan.
“We should never be naïve enough to think that even if Iran were able to overrun Israel — annihilated or somehow conquered it — that they would say, ‘OK, that’s it. That’s all we wanted. We have a finish line here.’ Because they’ve been insistent that that’s not the final step. It’s only the first one,” he added.
Meanwhile, Huckabee says the US has even more to gain from its alliance with Israel, whose defense industry has developed one of the world’s most effective air defense systems, the Iron Dome.
Huckabee argued an Iron Dome adapted for America could similarly protect the US from foreign attacks.
“No one has done it more effectively than they have,” he said. “Now granted their country is smaller — the size of New Jersey, not the size of all of the United States — but what they have done is scalable. What they have been able to create is an Iron Dome that is expanded over the course of their country and over the full, really, breadth of their country.
“With our resources and also knowing where our strategic targets are, we certainly have the capacity to do that.”