The United States Ambassador to Israel is an ordained Baptist minister who calls Israel home, tells American pastors to defend it from their pulpits, and questions whether Christians who reject Zionism are really Christians at all. He also privately threatened Israel with diplomatic consequences over its treatment of Christians while saying nothing publicly. His name is Mike Huckabee, and he has betrayed America and Jesus these ten documented times.
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While preparing the NXR article I published today on Israeli mistreatment of Christians in the Holy Land, I stumbled across something that stopped me cold. I will get to the specifics in a moment. But the short version is this: while researching the documented, systematic, multi-front campaign to erase the oldest Christian communities on earth from the land where the faith was born, I kept running into the same name. Not as a defender of persecuted Christians, but as a problem.
The United States Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister and self-described lover of Jesus, has spent his entire tenure in Jerusalem doing the bidding of the state making life untenable for Christ’s people in that city, with such devotion, such theological earnestness, and such apparent obliviousness to the contradiction that I can no longer file it under “complicated” and move on.
There is something more interesting happening with Huckabee than cynical careerism. Cynical careerism, I can explain in a sentence. What Huckabee represents requires a theology lesson first, and then a list, and then probably a stiff drink.
THE THEOLOGICAL MALFUNCTION THAT MADE HIM THIS WAY
Before we get to the list, a brief but necessary detour into why Mike Huckabee is the way he is, because it does not begin with his ambassadorship, and it does not even begin with his political career. It begins in Arkansas, in a denomination he once led, with a theological question he answered badly.
Most of my readers from back at Pulpit & Pen and Protestia know the history of the Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention, but I’m not sure how many at Insight to Incite are the same crowd. The Conservative Resurgence was the late-twentieth-century effort to reclaim the denomination for biblical inerrancy, a battle polarized between conservatives and moderates (i.e., liberals). The battle was about inerrancy, but not just about inerrancy. If a pastor or theologian is wishy-washy on inerrancy, they probably believe in female clergy, are soft on gays, or have some other doctrinal malady.
What few people know is where Mike Huckabee stood during that fight. Huckabee served as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention at the tail end of the moderate era, making him the last moderate to hold that position before the Resurgence swept through and brought the convention back to confessional ground. He was not, in the parlance of the age, a strong inerrancy man. He occupied the accommodating middle that the moderates preferred, where Scripture was respected but not fully trusted, where the social gospel retained its prestige, and theological precision was treated as a hobby for people who needed to relax more. He was soft on inerrancy then (his “other malady” was his belief in Soul Sleep and annihilationism).
Where he stood on inerrancy matters, not merely as biographical trivia, but as a diagnostic. A man who hedges on whether the Bible means exactly what it says is a man whose interpretive instincts are already calibrated to read the text in whatever direction he feels most comfortable. And for Mike Huckabee, what has always felt most comfortable is Israel
Dispensational Zionism is the theological system that tells you the Abrahamic Promise of Genesis 12 (”I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you”) applies directly and unconditionally to the modern ethnic Jewish state. It is not a fringe position in our age, but there was a time not long ago that it was utterly unheard of. I can find no example of anyone holding until the 19th Century. It has been the operating theology of mainstream American evangelicalism since Oxford published the “Scofield Bible” (it was their Bible, Scofield’s name) and the prophecy-chart industry colonized every evangelical bookshelf in the country.
It is also, under any rigorous reading of the Bible, simply wrong. Paul is explicit in Galatians 3: the seed of Abraham to whom the promise was made is Christ, not ethnic descendants. The heirs of Abraham are those who are in Christ by faith, Jew and Gentile alike. The Abrahamic Promise, as read through the apostle specifically commissioned to explain it to the Gentiles, is fulfilled in the Church. The blessing flows to those who receive Christ. The curse falls on those who reject him.
This means that Dispensational Zionism has it precisely backwards. When you bless the rabbinic Jewish state that explicitly rejects Jesus as Messiah, you are not honoring the Abrahamic Promise. You are inverting it. You are blessing those who curse Christ and, in Huckabee’s specific case, as we are about to see, cursing those who bless him. The Christians of the Holy Land are the living heirs of the promise. The Dispensationalist blesses their persecutors and calls it faithfulness.
This is the theological operating system running under everything Mike Huckabee does. He is not a villain (for this alone). He is a sincere man whose scriptural categories have been scrambled so thoroughly that he cannot see the contradiction between loving Jesus and spending his ambassadorship providing diplomatic cover for a government that is systematically driving Jesus’s people from Jesus’s land. Understanding that does not make the list that follows any less damning. It just explains why he signed up for it with such enthusiasm.
TEN BETRAYALS
ONE: HE HOSTED SPY AND TRAITOR, JONATHAN POLLARD
In July 2025, Huckabee met privately with Jonathan Pollard at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem. The meeting was not on his official schedule. The White House did not know it was happening. The CIA station chief in Jerusalem was, according to three officials who spoke to the New York Times, alarmed. Many don’t comprehend how egregious this was, to meet for tea someone who has betrayed the United States, and afterward, showed no remorse and has rubbed it in and insulted the nation for thirty years.
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Pollard stole classified material describing the operational architecture of American signals intelligence, satellite tracking systems, source networks, blind spots, and the entire nervous system of how the United States watches the world, and handed it to Israel. Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger described the consequences as "damage beyond calculation."
Pollard spent thirty years in federal prison, moved to Israel the moment his parole conditions permitted, and Benjamin Netanyahu personally met him on the tarmac at the airport and gave him a literal hero’s welcome. Then Pollard gave his first extensive interview since his release, and encouraged any and every American Jew who finds himself with access to intelligence useful to Israel to spy against the U.S. When asked what he’d like to convey to Jews, Pollard told Jews that if they’re in a position to spy against the United States, or move to Israel, to stay in the U.S. to spy. He said, “You have to decide whether your loyalty to Israel is more important than your life.” And then, he told them that it should be.
These days, accusing Jews of “dual loyalty” will get you branded an antisemite. Granted, Pollard did not actually call it dual loyalty, to be precise. He called it “single loyalty.” He said his loyalty was to the Jewish people and the Jewish state, and every that all American Jews who considered themselves more American than Jewish were deluding themselves about where they belonged. He said he has what he described as a “racial obligation to Israel. His wife said from prison that what they did was their “moral obligation as Jews.”
Huckabee had quietly advocated for Pollard's release for years, arguing the sentence was too harsh for a man who spied for an ally. When the meeting leaked, Steve Bannon called for Huckabee's immediate recall. Tucker Carlson called it shocking behavior from a United States ambassador. A Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee called Pollard a convicted traitor and said the meeting was unacceptable.
The White House said it stood by Huckabee anyway. Huckabee said nothing was requested and nothing was granted, which is the kind of statement that explains nothing and is designed to explain nothing. The question is not what was discussed in that room. The question is what kind of theological operating system causes a man to open the door of the United States Embassy to someone who said his single loyalty was to a foreign state, who said American Jews in intelligence positions should spy for that state, who was greeted at the airport by its prime minister like a conquering hero, and to call it a personal courtesy. You already know the answer. It is the same system running under every other item on this list.
TWO: HE SAID NOTHING ABOUT CHRISTIANS BEING SPIT ON
Itamar Ben-Gvir is not a fringe figure making remarks at a rally that can be quietly walked back. He is the National Security Minister of the State of Israel, the official with direct authority over the national police, and in 2025, he stated publicly that spitting on Christians in Jerusalem is “not a criminal matter.”
He was not misquoted. He was not taken out of context. He was responding to the documented, years-long pattern of ultra-Orthodox and settler youth spitting on clergy, monks, nuns, and Christian pilgrims in the streets of the Old City, a pattern so routine and so well-documented that the Benedictine community at the Church of the Dormition on Mount Zion and the Franciscan friars of the Custody of the Holy Land had both formally complained about it.
Priests walking in clerical dress through the Christian Quarter have learned to anticipate it. Foreign pilgrims have been filmed wiping it from their faces outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches raised it explicitly in formal communications. And the man with authority over the national police looked at all of that and said it was not a criminal matter. This was not a gaffe. It was a policy statement from the cabinet minister responsible for enforcing the law. In fact, he defended it as “a longstanding and treasured Jewish tradition of antiquity.”
Of course, stoning Christians is also a longstanding and treasured Jewish tradition of antiquity. God forbid they start doing that again in Jerusalem or Tel-Aviv.
Mike Huckabee, ordained Baptist minister, self-described lover of Jesus, Ambassador of the United States to the country where this was declared government non-policy, said nothing. He did not call a press conference. He did not post on X. He did not quietly summon the relevant officials for a conversation, or if he did, he did not tell anyone about it. He was, in that same period, publicly praising Israel's hospitality toward Christians and privately threatening consequences if evangelical visa applications were not processed.
The Christians being spat on did not have visa applications. They had habits and cassocks and the audacity to walk through the city where their faith was born. Huckabee's silence in the face of a cabinet minister declaring their humiliation legally permissible is not a complicated diplomatic calculation. It is a straightforward answer to a straightforward question about whose Christianity he is actually defending.
THREE: HE RECRUITED A THOUSAND AMERICAN PASTORS TO DEFEND ISRAEL FROM THEIR PULPITS
In December 2025, Huckabee addressed more than 1,000 American pastors and Christian leaders who had gathered in Jerusalem for what was billed as a pastoral solidarity event. He told them to go home and light their pulpits on fire with the truth about Israel. He told them to push back against Israel’s critics on the right and the left. He told them, “Every enemy of Israel is the enemy of America.” I’d like this fact-checked, for starters.
If you think this section is only under the “betrayed Jesus” heading, you’re mistaken. It’s also a betrayal of the United States. His statement is untrue, and it’s a horrible, horrible, awful thing for an ambassador to say. In fact, an ambassador who says something this horrible, with such awful potential consequences for American foreign policy, should be fired on the spot. Here’s why:
Israel considers Saudi Arabia an enemy. It has no diplomatic relations with Israel, has fought wars against it, and funds Palestinian causes. Yet, the United States considers Saudi Arabia a critical strategic partner, sells it hundreds of billions in weapons, and stations troops there.
Israel considers Qatar an enemy. But Qatar also hosts the largest American military base in the Middle East, Al Udeid, which serves as the forward headquarters of CENTCOM. The United States and Qatar have a formal defense cooperation agreement. In January, President Trump issued an executive order assuring Qatar’s protection against Israel (unnamed, but it was the “foreign hostility” in question that had just bombed it, and he references Qatar as “a great ally of the United States.”
Israel considers Turkey an enemy. But Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States, bound by Article 5 mutual defense commitments. Erdogan has called Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide, severed trade relations with Israel in 2024, and has been one of Israel’s most vocal state-level critics. Turkey and Israel have had deeply hostile relations for years. Turkey is still in NATO. The United States still operates out of Incirlik Air Base. We are still bound to defend them if Israel attacks them.
Oman has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has historically supported Palestinian statehood. Oman has a longstanding cooperation agreement with the United States military and hosts American naval assets.
Meanwhile, the opposite certainly isn’t true, either. Our enemies are rarely Israel’s enemies. In 1993, the CIA director testified to Congress that Israel had been selling U.S. secrets to China for a decade. Israel sold our weapons and drone tech to China. Israel has sold our weapons to Russia. Israel has sold our weapons to Mexican cartels. Israel regularly maintains normative relationships with nations on our enemies’ list.
But back to betraying Christ, Huckabee said this - to go preach about supporting Israel - to a thousand pastors in Jerusalem, using the moral authority of his office, his ministry, and his self-identification as an evangelical Christian to organize the American clergy as a domestic advocacy apparatus for a foreign government. He said nothing, at that gathering, about the 144 anti-Christian incidents documented in Israel in the nine months prior. He said nothing about the arnona tax campaign against the ancient churches. He said nothing about the settler who torched St. George Church in Taybeh five months earlier. He told a thousand American preachers to go home and defend Israel, and they gave him a standing ovation.
FOUR: HE WROTE A SECRET LETTER IN FURY WHILE PUBLICLY PRAISING CHRISTIAN HOSPITALITY
The one I mentioned above requires careful staging to be appreciated properly. In July 2025, Huckabee sent an unpublished letter to Interior Minister Moshe Arbel that, by the standards of diplomatic correspondence, was incandescent. He told Arbel that Israel had been running investigations into long-established evangelical Christian organizations since January with no stated basis, that none of them had received clergy visas all year, that the situation was “incomprehensible” and getting worse rather than better, and that if it was not resolved, he would be “obligated” to publicly declare that Israel no longer welcomes Christians and to advise American evangelicals to reconsider their donations and their tourism.
He threatened reciprocal visa restrictions on Israelis entering the United States. He was, in private, genuinely furious. He was also, during the same period, publicly posting about Israel’s wonderful hospitality toward Christians and the extraordinary relationship between the Jewish state and the evangelical community. The letter leaked to Hebrew media on July 17. The visa issue was resolved by July 21 after Netanyahu’s office personally intervened.
Despite being resolved after threatening everything short of the wrath of God, Huckabee was not only publicly lauding Israel for their wonderful treatment of Christians, but he has since alluded to this controversy in the past tense as a “conspiracy,” knowing full well that it wasn’t conspiratorial. When Tucker had on the “mustache nun” who made similar accusations about Eastern Orthodox clergy not receiving visas, Huckabee dismissed those concerns as “rumor and speculation,” having first-hand evidence that Israel has done this before, allowing her to be dragged through the mud as some kind of liar.
FIVE: HE STAYED SILENT WHEN THE ARSONISTS WERE IDENTIFIED
On July 21, the same day the visa crisis was declared resolved (#4, above), Huckabee took to X to suggest that people should not rush to make assumptions about who had committed the arson at St. George Church in Taybeh. The arson was determined to have been committed by Jewish settlers.
The settlers who attacked Taybeh in July 2025 torched the fifth-century St. George Church and the town’s historic Christian cemetery. When the attack happened, Huckabee went to Taybeh, called it an “act of terror,” said perpetrators need to “pay a price,” and declared that what was destroyed “belongs to God.” Sounds great, right?
Then the perpetrators were identified as Jewish settlers. Huckabee went quiet on the subject with the particular efficiency of a man who had been briefed on what silence costs and what speaking costs and made his calculation. All in a sudden, it wasn’t an issue that deserved his time and attention - or anyone’s attention.
The people of Taybeh are still waiting for payment. The attackers are still awaiting consequences with the unhurried confidence of people who understand their political environment. Huckabee had called them terrorists when the identity of the perpetrators was unclear. When the identity became clear, his righteous thunder relocated.
SIX: HE IGNORED THE HOLY FAMILY CHURCH BOMBING WHILE FIGHTING FOR EVANGELICAL PAPERWORK
The same week Huckabee’s visa letter was leaking and dominating headlines, the Israeli military struck the Holy Family Church in Gaza, killing three people: a sixty-year-old janitor, an eighty-four-year-old woman receiving care in a tent on the grounds, and a seventy-one-year-old woman who died of her wounds. The parish priest was wounded in the same strike.
The Washington Examiner, not exactly a Palestinian sympathizer publication, noted explicitly that Huckabee’s complaints about Christian treatment in Israel in regard to the visa situation made no mention of the Holy Family Church bombing, which was occurring simultaneously.
His letter to Arbel was about visa paperwork for evangelical organizations. It was about the bureaucratic inconvenience suffered by Zionist missionaries. It was not about the three professing Christians whose names were Saad, Foumia, and Najwa, who died in a Catholic church that had already been struck multiple times by Israel in less than two years. He cared about Zionists being mistreated, but gave not a single damn about the native believers who oppose Christian Zionism being targeted (these munitions are accurate) and murdered.
The selectivity is not incidental. It is definitional. In Huckabee’s operating framework, the Christians who count are those who share his theology and run approved organizations. The ancient church Christians are a different category of person.
SEVEN: HE ATTACKED THE PATRIARCHS AND HEADS OF CHURCHES FOR REJECTING HIS THEOLOGY
Last month, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, the leaders of the historic apostolic churches who have maintained Christian presence in the Holy Land through fourteen centuries of varying political arrangements, issued a statement explicitly rejecting Christian Zionism as a threat to Christian unity and a form of political interference in the life of the church. This was not a radical document. It was a pastoral statement from men who watch their communities shrink every year and who have concluded that the theology being imported to their region by American evangelicals is not helping them and is, in fact, being weaponized against their authority.
Mike Huckabee responded publicly on social media. His response was: “It’s hard for me to understand why everyone who takes on the moniker ‘Christian’ would not also be a Zionist.” It was absolutely infuriating to me, the abject arrogance of wondering aloud how someone could reject a theology invented in an Irish basement in 1821 could possibly be a believer. I can’t imagine how rightly angry the Orthodox are.
The U.S. Ambassador to a foreign country publicly questioned the Christian legitimacy of the ancient churches of Jerusalem for declining to endorse the theological framework that he uses to justify his own diplomatic alignment with that country. What business does an American diplomat have intervening in an internal theological statement from the apostolic churches? The answer is that Huckabee does not experience it as an internal theological statement. He experiences it as a threat to the Zionist Project, and the project is more important than the churches.
EIGHT: HE SAID NOTHING WHEN ISRAEL SCHEMED TO SHUT DOWN CHURCHES
The Armenian community has had a continuous presence in Jerusalem since the fourth century. The Armenian Patriarchate has maintained its mission in the city since the seventh century. The Armenian Quarter is one of the four historic quarters of the Old City, a neighborhood of monasteries, schools, and stone courtyards that has outlasted every empire that has ever claimed Jerusalem as its own.
In January 2023, the Jerusalem municipality sent him tax bills totaling approximately 21 million shekels, roughly $5.7 million, and simultaneously notified him that foreclosure proceedings had already been initiated to seize Patriarchate properties over the alleged debt.
The debt, the municipality claimed, had been accumulating since 1994. It had never been adjudicated in court. Standard legal procedures for establishing the debt had not been followed. Christian institutions in Jerusalem have historically been exempt from the arnona property tax precisely because they provide schools, hospitals, and social services that the municipality would otherwise be required to fund itself, a status that had been honored through the Ottoman period, the British Mandate, and the Israeli state for decades.
Even Muslims refused to tax the church.
The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued a joint statement calling the proceedings legally dubious and morally unacceptable. They called the debt unverified and exorbitant. They warned that allowing the foreclosure to proceed would set a precedent that could destroy the financial foundations of every Christian institution in the Holy Land. The detail that the Jerusalem municipality’s own advocates did not publicly dwell on is that a significant portion of the alleged debt concerned properties the municipality leases from the Patriarchate, and that the municipality owed the Patriarchate over ten million shekels in unpaid rent dating back to 2017.
The institution being threatened with property seizure owed money to the institution threatening to seize it. Mike Huckabee said nothing publicly about the municipality’s move to foreclose on sixteen centuries of Armenian Christian presence in the city he calls home. The Patriarchate called upon the Prime Minister, the Interior Minister, and the head of the governmental negotiating committee to intervene. They did not call upon Huckabee. They already knew the answer they would get.
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