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President-elect Trump is filling out his foreign policy team, and many members are fierce defenders of Israel's right-wing government. NPR's Michele Kelemen takes a look at the man who will be representing Trump as ambassador to Israel.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: For years, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has taken fellow evangelical Christians on tours of Israel. So when Trump tapped him to be his next ambassador, Israeli officials were upbeat.
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DANNY DANON: I want to congratulate my dear friend Governor Mike Huckabee. I think he will be a great ambassador to Israel.
KELEMEN: Danny Danon, who represents Israel at the United Nations, says Huckabee is very familiar with what he calls the facts on the ground.
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DANON: I think he visited Israel dozens of times. And I had the honor to escort him. Also, after October 7, he came, and I took him to visit the sites on Kfar Aza and Be'eri and other locations where the massacre took place.
KELEMEN: On Israeli radio, Huckabee, a Baptist pastor, talked about his long history with Israel.
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MIKE HUCKABEE: This is an extraordinary opportunity to be able to represent my country to a land that I have loved since I first visited there in July of 1973.
KELEMEN: Palestinians are nervous about what his appointment could mean for their hopes for an eventual Palestinian state. He once said, there's no such thing as a Palestinian. And on the eve of the last Trump administration, Huckabee visited an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, saying the Israelis have a right to build there.
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HUCKABEE: 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. The only occupiers were the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Turks, the Brits, the Romans. They were occupiers. The Jews are the occupants.
KELEMEN: A leading figure in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, Ron Dermer, once said that Israel should prioritize the passionate support of evangelical Christians over American Jews, who are far more critical of the right-wing government. University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami has been polling Americans for years about Israel.
SHIBLEY TELHAMI: The big shift that has taken place over the past 15 years particularly has been that Republicans have become far more supportive of Israel than in the past, but much of that support came from evangelicals.
KELEMEN: Telhami says evangelical leaders have embraced Israel's expansion and the settlement movement. Far-right members of Netanyahu's government are already gearing up to annex parts of the West Bank. Trump's former ambassador, David Friedman, also supported Israeli settlements and Trump's decisions to recognize the annexation of the Golan Heights and the move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Ultimately, it will be up to Trump to decide U.S. policy on this. Telhami says the choice of Huckabee as ambassador is still significant.
TELHAMI: The value that even Netanyahu would see in it is the consolidation between the evangelical bases of the Republican Party and the state of Israel during a very, very difficult period where Israel is getting a lot of pushback from Jewish Americans who are offended by what's happening in Gaza and beyond.
KELEMEN: The outgoing Biden administration says it is still working on a plan to end the war in Gaza and set a clear timetable for a Palestinian state. But with an incoming ambassador who has questioned the whole idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, much of that diplomacy is now in doubt. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
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