On Saturday, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited Taybeh, a Palestinian Christian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that’s been under attack by Jewish settlers.
Huckabee’s visit came nearly two weeks after settlers set a fire right next to the historic Church of St. George, which was first built in the fifth century, and three priests based in Taybeh issued a plea for help. While he didn’t name the perpetrators, Huckabee issued a statement strongly condemning the attack, which surprised many observers due to his history of staunch support for the Israeli occupation and the expansion of settlements.
“One thing that we strongly agree on is that any desecration to a holy place – it doesn’t matter whether it’s a church, a mosque, or a synagogue – it’s unacceptable. To commit an act of sacrilege by desecrating a place that is supposed to be a place of worship, it is an act of terror, and it is a crime,” Huckabee said.
“There should be consequences, and it should be harsh consequences because it is one of the last bastions of our civilization, the places where we worship,” he added.
Christian leaders in the region visited Taybeh on July 14 to show support for the community and detailed more of the settler violence in their statement. The Council of Patriarchs and Heads of Churches of Jerusalem said the settlers had also erected a billboard that read “you have no future here,” making it clear their goal is to drive the locals out of their homes so they can take over the land.
Huckabee’s visit to Taybeh came after he condemned the killing of Saif Mussallet, a 20-year-old from Florida who was murdered by Jewish settlers while visiting family in the West Bank.
“I have asked [Israel] to aggressively investigate the murder of Saif Mussallet, an American citizen who was visiting family in Sinjil when he was beaten to death. There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act. Saif was just 20 yrs old,” Huckabee wrote on X.
While Huckabee’s post about Mussallet also didn’t mention that Israeli settlers were the perpetrators and stopped short of calling for a US probe into the murder, which is what the family is calling for, his statement on the killing also came as a surprise due to his history.
Huckabee is a Christian Zionist who believes God has given historic Palestine to the modern state of Israel and rejects terms like “settlement” and the “West Bank” since he believes the land belongs to Israel. In 2008, he was recorded saying that there’s “no such thing as a Palestinian,” and as US ambassador, he suggested that a Palestinian state could be carved out of a Muslim country. “Does it have to be in Judea and Samaria?” he said in an interview last month, using the biblical name for the West Bank.
Huckabee’s radical views about the West Bank haven’t changed, and he has shown strong support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the genocidal war on Gaza, but he does appear willing to criticize the Israeli government. On July 16, the US ambassador sent a letter to Interior Minister Moshe Arbel threatening to declare that Israel is no longer welcoming to Christian groups due to visa restrictions.
“It is with great distress that I write to you my profound disappointment that the meeting held in your office has not resulted in what I hoped to be a simple resolution of the issue of routine granting of visas for Christian organizations and workers, as has been practiced for decades,” Huckabee wrote.
Huckabee threatened that the US could impose reciprocal visa restrictions. “The United States and evangelical Christian organizations are your friends. We feel we are being treated as adversaries,” he said. “Surely this is NOT the relationship the State of Israel wishes to have with its best partner and friend on the planet.”
