Ambassador Mike Huckabee defends Israel loudly and proudly

Photos: Shmuel Drei

Beneath the gentlemanly charm of America’s ambassador to Israel lies a core of steel. Having taken office at a critical time for both countries, he’s proved the perfect choice for the Age of Trump – combative, fearless and unapologetically pro-Israel

Aside from a few personal knick-knacks and a new POTUS portrait, the American ambassador’s office in Arnona, Jerusalem, stays the same whichever party runs Washington. Same plain-vanilla decor, same bulletproof windows, same grouping of chairs where the incumbent ambassador hosts the incumbent Mishpacha journalist for what’s now a traditional chat.

So the surprise in store for visitors to Mike Huckabee’s inner sanctum isn’t the MAGA guitar that hangs over his display cabinet — gifted by his wife in testament to his political affiliations and penchant for music. It’s his budding mezuzah collection. Two to be precise — one on the door, one on his desk.

“That one’s a stone from Mount Ebal that they carved out and put the Shema inside,” says the evangelical ambassador of the smooth slab of Shomron rock. “The other one is in the shape of a B-2 bomber, made from the shrapnel of an Iranian ballistic missile. It’s a little big to put on the doorpost, which is why I’m going to keep it in the display box.”

That tale of two mezuzahs is what sets the twinkly-eyed 70-year-old former Arkansas governor, Fox News presenter, and Southern Baptist minister apart from the predecessors whose solemn portraits line the entrance to his office.

Because Mike Huckabee is nothing like the long line of foreign service veterans and establishment political appointees — Democrat and Republican, Jewish and non-Jewish — who occupied the prestigious office before him. The man who visited Israel more than 100 times over the course of five decades doesn’t have much left to learn about his new position. The man whose Biblical beliefs and advocacy for modern-day Israel run so deep that his treasured possessions are these mezuzahs is something new.

In his Bible-infused affection for the land and hawkish defense of the modern Jewish state, he’s the personification of millions of American evangelicals whose commitment to Trump is rivaled only by their affinity for Israel.

Less than six months into the job, Huckabee has had quite the baptism of fire, so to speak. While playing a bridging role as Israel and the US joined forces to confront Iran, he ran to the shelters like millions of Israelis. With Israel demonized by European leaders and international media for supposed genocide, he’s hit back — fiercely and personally — at American allies.

“Did UK surrender to the Nazis and drop food to them?” he tweeted at British prime minister Keir Starmer, who joined the push for a Palestinian state. “If you had been PM then, UK would be speaking German!”

In the Age of Trump, where starchy, po-faced diplomats are a dying breed, the president likes his ambassadors red in tooth and claw. Huckabee fits that bill perfectly, often going even further than the famously blunt Trump. Where his boss posted in support of Bibi as the latter’s interminable trial drags on, Huckabee memorably went bigger.

He turned up in the courtroom waving a Bugs Bunny figure in open mockery of a justice system that he sees as trying to topple Israel’s leader.

Away from social media and the cameras, though, Mike Huckabee comes across less as a Trumpian troll and more as the courtly, old-school American that he is. He’s articulate about the prospects for peace with Israel’s sketchy neighbors, and passionate about confronting the dangerous rise of anti-Semitism — including on his own side of the aisle.

Under those Southern manners is a layer of steel that he deploys whenever Israel is vilified. “If somebody says horrible, libelous, vicious things about my partner,” he says “I’m going to stand up and speak back.”