Matthew Hoh, associate director of the Eisenhower Media Network, traveled to Israel recently. His visit included a stop at an Israeli viewing platform of Gaza genocide, complete with telescope. This platform, partially funded by US aid to Israel, as is the genocide. The viewing platform is open to the public, and is a popular location for Israeli public school field trips.
If he is confirmed, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee will be the first non-Jewish US ambassador to Israel since 2011. He is a Christian Zionist, a very special category within the US political sector.
Zionism is sometimes preached from Christian pulpits, discrediting Christianity in every case. It’s difficult to reconcile Jesus’s teachings with the conduct of mass murder for a political empire, as European and American imperialists did robustly through the 1600s to the 1900s. Christian governments, using ostensibly Christian soldiers, worked to kill, rape, terrorize, enslave and ravage in the name of bringing Jesus to people who didn’t know Him. Christianity expanded. But as it expanded, and politicized, it lost credibility.
When governmental or religious credibility is lost, the people gradually, and then rapidly, turn away from those governments, and those religions.
Accelerated by the accessibility of unfiltered information, this turning away has been happening in the Christian Zionist community for some time. It is in this context that Trump is making good on some variant of H.L. Mencken’s observation that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” Sending Huckabee to Jerusalem rings of Trumpian superlative, and it gives me a peculiar kind of hope.
I doubt the Israeli government actually welcomes this outspoken “Christian” politician as US Ambassador. Since 2011, only American Zionist Jews have held this post. Combined with outspoken Zionist Elaine Stefanik at the UN, the world will have daily confirmation of US explicit and command bias for Greater Israel – loud and proud, out of the closet.
Gone will be the doublespeak and pretense of diplomacy coming from the UN and from the US house in west Jerusalem. Gone will be the last semblance of US credibility in Middle East policy. The curtain, pulled back grandly, reveals a con that may make us think.
Seeing a curtain pulled back can be shocking, memorable, and empowering.
Trump’s comedic timing has always been top-notch, and his preference for action over dilly-dallying is refreshing. If allowed, his timing and his actions will excise some of the post-Constitutional cancer in DC that has destroyed our money, our liberty and our peace.
Trump’s list of potential appointments include many who terrify the Senate, and some who comfort it and bring it joy. Assuming there is debate on which candidates should be deemed acceptable to DC, and those who are deemed unacceptable, a certain kind of revelation may be coming.
By revelation, I mean a revealing, an open discussion of biases, and bald inconsistencies of morality and ethics.
The best thing the Senate can do is let all the nominations pass quickly, in recess appointments or via swift confirmations.
How can the Israeli lobby publicly oppose a Mike Huckabee, Christian savior of Zionism, as the US Ambassador? How could they not love a crusader Secretary of Defense who worships Zion? How could they not embrace the pro-Israel Stefanik at the UN?
Goetz, Gabbard, RFK, Jr, and Hegseth – FBI and DoJ critic Goetz as Attorney General, no-fly listed former soldier/Democrat candidate for President Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, enemy of big Pharma and actual health warrior RFK, Jr to Health and Human Services, and young Major Pete Hegseth (once “turned in to the authorities” by a peer as a danger to national security) to run the Pentagon – are thumbs in eyes for each these four institutions. We also have the irreverent yet dead serious team of Musk and Ramaswamy going after government waste and uselessness, with Vivek calmly explaining how first we fire all bureaucrats who have SSNs ending in an odd number, and then hold a second round to fire those with an SSN starting with an even number.
If the Senate somehow wishes to fight all the pro-America nominations, while not blinking an eye at all of the Israel First nominations, it will have to cross a minefield of Things You Cannot Say Out Loud in Washington. What fun that would be! Instead of a basket of deplorables, Trump may be presenting a Pandora’s box of deplorables that many in Washington would rather not open up.
Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel is illustrative. Ambassadors are present in all kinds of US and host country meetings. The US relationship with Israel on the political side is not about religion, it is about petrodollar management, military exploitation, and political blackmail. The elephant in the room will be Huckabee, who thinks he understands Israel and the pro-Israel sector in DC, yet will sense he is being chronically sidelined, shut out of decisions, in part because Israel-in-two-time-zones cannot trust him. As ambassador, Huckabee must meet with Americans of all kinds, and help them out. How will he respond to another Rachel Corrie incident, or a thousand like it? Will he, as a Christian in Israel, be ceremoniously spat upon when he leaves his office to investigate? In 2003, the US Ambassador to Israel was Daniel Kurtzer, and as the story unfolded, the Corrie family was not well represented, nor were they effectively advocated for by that US Ambassador, or those that followed him. In the end, it was her fault that the Israeli bulldozer ran over her.
We live now in a different era. Post October 7th, Israeli families of the dead and missing are criticizing their government, and filing suit against it, for its misdeeds, including but not limited to various Hannibal directives, and a backfiring war on five fronts. Will the Christian Zionist ambassador have ideas on how to save Zionism? Zionism, like all the ‘isms, is intolerant of internal debate. That’s what curious assassinations and mysterious falls from high windows are for. In the end, US ambassador to Israel may not matter, as US-Israel policy is made in Washington, mostly by Israelis. I’m betting Mike Huckabee’s pride and rigidity will cause more problems for Israel than it solves.
The same reasoning, or sense of humor, Trump is using to stick it to the permanent bureaucracy may also be at work in his Christian Zionist appointments into the Israel policy mix. No matter how it works out, he can say to his voters, in almost every sector, isn’t this what you wanted?
I hope Mike Huckabee soon travels to one of the Gaza genocide viewing areas, and looks through the telescope. If there is any Christianity in the man we will know it then.
