The Times of Israel reports:

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. [Continue reading…]