US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has been working to help keep Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in power by meeting with members of the coalition in the Knesset who are threatening to dissolve the government, Israeli media have reported.
Ultra-Orthodox (Haredim) parties have threatened to bolt the Netanyahu coalition over the lack of a draft exemption law for Israel’s Haredi community. According to Israel’s Channel 13, Huckabee is working to help resolve the coalition crisis and has held recent conversations with Haredi politicians.
The report said that during those conversations, Huckabee told them that “government stability is important for addressing the Iranian issue.”
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid responded to the report, saying it would amount to interference in Israel’s internal politics if it were true.
“Since I have no doubt that Ambassador Huckabee respects Israel’s independence and its democracy, I hope and believe that the report that he is interfering in Israel’s internal politics and trying to help Netanyahu [deal with] the ultra-Orthodox in the military draft law crisis are not true. Israel is not a protectorate,” Lapid wrote on X.
Huckabee is a Christian Zionist who believes God gave historic Palestine to the modern state of Israel, making him a strong supporter of the Netanyahu government’s priority on expanding illegal settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Since taking his post as the US ambassador in Israel, Huckabee has also provided a strong defense of Israel’s genocidal onslaught and starvation campaign in Gaza.
