So Israel, which has killed hundreds of Gazans, many of them children, since the so-called Ceasefire was declared on October 11th, has now stated that it is currently intending to maintain its “yellow line” occupation of more than half of the Gaza Strip. That will likely eventually make most of Gaza de facto part of Israel and the Palestinians who once upon a time lived there are shit out of luck, as the old saying goes. And as for those benighted creatures who actually believe that ceasing fire means one must stop shooting it is perhaps past time to ask the man behind the “Peace Plan” which bears the name “Trump” what is going on. Does peace means you disarm the Palestinians so they cannot defend themselves while giving Israel both freedom to occupy their land and to use it as a shooting gallery for killing kids out looking for something to eat? After all, stealing someone else’s land is something that the Jewish state is very good at, see more below.

So Donald Trump, who is assiduously seeking the next Nobel Peace Prize based on his claimed performance is the man in charge of what goes down, but he has been silent and by his presumed reticence he gives Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli army a green light to kill at will and lie about what it does. And that silence prevails up and down the line of the morons devoid of any compassion or moral scruples that Trump has somehow collected and appointed to high office in his criminal enterprise administration. Since the State Department and the so-called War Department are not actually interested in what is going on in the Middle East or anywhere else, except insofar as they can steal oil and other commodities while telling foreigners whom to vote for, one might actually be tempted to call the relevant US Embassy to find out what is happening and to complain if it comes to that. But forget about calling the Embassy in Israel’s illegal capital Jerusalem as it is Trump-land, inhabited by a creature who calls himself an ambassador but who really is an ultra-Zionist corrupted apologist for everything Israel does and every crime that it commits. And he bases it all on the Bible!

I have already written how US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee recently met with Israeli-Jewish American spy Jonathan Pollard, whose claim to fame is that he stole more secrets from the United States than anyone else ever has and that includes Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed in 1953 for their theft of nuclear weapons technology to benefit the old Soviet Union. Pollard is a hero in Israel who was pardoned by Donald Trump at the urging of Huckabee to allow him to emigrate to Israel after his prison term ended. It was a friendly meeting according to Pollard and Huckabee did not bother to inform Washington about what he was doing. Trump did not respond as he should have, which would have been to fire Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee is your typical evangelical Israel-firster out of Arkansas but the mystery is why anyone would appoint him to the position he now holds, suggesting that Netanyahu might have given Trump his marching orders on whom to pick. Admittedly, Trump is quite capable of making terrible choices all on his own, witness also the choice of his former lawyer David Friedman as ambassador during his first term. Friedman only qualified for the post by virtue of his being Jewish and a defender of all things Israeli, so one might hypothesize that there is some kind of pattern vis-à-vis who winds up in Jerusalem. And the only thing lost in the process is any sense of a US Ambassador to the Jewish state serving to benefit the United States and the American people, which appears to be irrelevant. Friedman, and now Huckabee, are consumed with making the case that Israel can do no wrong because the Jewish people have been Chosen by God. So, if you are an American traveling in Israel and need help, the US Embassy would be the last place you would go to.

Israel exceptionalism when it comes to any kind of response from official Washington no matter what crimes it might commit against Americans are numerous. One might cite cases like that of Rachel Corrie, deliberately run over and killed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003, who was ignored by the US Embassy, as was Shireen Abu Akleh, a journalist covering the Gaza genocide who was targeted and killed by an Israeli Army sniper in 2022. The US Embassy, far from demanding explanations for killing Americans, decided in both cases to let Israel look into it, with predictable results. And then there is the story of the USS Liberty attack by Israel fighter planes and torpedo boats in June 1967, which killed 34 seamen and injured over 172 in international waters off Egypt in an attempt to sink the intelligence gathering ship. President Lyndon B Johnson and his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara immediately called back US aircraft sent to assist the ship and then arranged for a cover-up. Johnson reportedly said that he would rather “see that ship go to the bottom than upset his good friend Israel.” The survivors from the Liberty are still reported to be waiting for Congress to do something, but the US national legislature is also controlled by Israel and its friends.

More recently, the United States government has notably not condemned Israel, or even tried to restrain it, over the slaughter in Gaza. On the contrary it enables the war crime by funding it, arming Israel, and providing it with political cover for whatever it does. At a recent “Ambassador Summit 2025” held in Jerusalem before an audience of 1,000 American evangelical “pastors” who had been flown in by the Israel lobby for the event, Huckabee gave his “take” countering reports of Israel’s recent reported atrocities. He repeated the neocon claims that Israel has a “right to defend itself” and expanded that to attack allegations that he regards as false. For example, he explained that Israel did not attack the State of Qatar on September 9th, 2025. The surprise attack against a country with which Israel was not at war had in fact targeted the leadership of Hamas, housed in a Qatari government residential complex, as it met to discuss an active ceasefire proposal presented by the United States. Huckabee argued oddly, contrary to the evidence and the clear intent, that Israel only targeted a single terrorist gathering, not a sovereign state—an action fully aligned with its right to protect its citizens from terrorism. Addressing a second claim, Huckabee argued that Israel is not blackmailing Donald Trump with information contained in the Jeffrey Epstein files, without providing any evidence that that was not the case as Epstein was clearly an Israeli intelligence asset who was working for Mossad and who exploited a close relationship with Trump. And, on the question of whether Israel was involved in the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Huckabee firmly dismissed the rumor, contending that there was absolutely no reason for Israel to target him, which is manifestly false as there were plenty of good reasons to do so, just as in the cases of the JFK killing and 9/11. Huckabee comes off as a cheerleader for the Jewish state as well being in a fully protective mode when it comes to Netanyahu and his manifestly evil associates.

What is odd, particularly given Huckabee’s Bible thumping, is the fact that he and the Embassy and the Trump Administration have not even done anything about the persecution of Christians by the Israeli government and its various constituencies. Trump has recently gone after the Nigerian government, threatening military intervention, for the problems Christians are allegedly having, but has no concern for churches being bombed and Christians killed in Gaza and on the West Bank. Admittedly, the Christians in question are Palestinians which means that they are included in the shoot to kill policies coming from Netanyahu and the fanatics that he has supporting him.

Israel has been engaged in making Christian worship more difficult both in Jerusalem and all along the West Bank. This has included restricting access to Christian holy sites in both Jerusalem and in Bethlehem on feast days like Christmas and Easter and allowing Jewish extremists, many of them the so-called settlers, to gather outside churches to spit on and verbally and physically abuse Christian worshipers, especially targeting foreign Christian visitors. Christian churches are even vandalized as Israeli police stand by and do nothing.

On the West Bank Christian villages are under siege, with settlers attacking farmers, destroying crops and olive trees, and killing livestock. Recently, Israeli settler groups began clearing and occupying land in and adjacent to the Christian Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, the largest remaining Christian town on the West Bank, located just east of Bethlehem. The settlers have placed mobile homes on a hilltop known by locals as Ush al-Ghurab and announced the establishment of a new settler outpost called Shdema. According to a report by the Balasan Initiative for Human Rights, the new Shdema outpost “marks a substantial escalation in Israel’s settlement expansion and territorial consolidation in the Bethlehem district.” When the new settlement is completed, Beit Sahour will be largely cut off, confined by Israeli Army controlled “Jews only” roads. The villagers will be unable to sustain themselves without any land to farm and will have to leave, if they can find anywhere to go to. This is typical Israeli government supported action against the Christian as well as Muslim communities and what do Mike Huckabee and his Embassy do about it? And Donald Trump, who claims to defend Christians? Nothing!

The State Department and American Embassies have been at it again in another recent case which has just surfaced in Congress, regarding an American journalist Dylan Collins who was wounded by the Israeli Army in Lebanon. Last week, a small group of Democratic lawmakers, joined by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International, called on Israel and the Trump administration to carry out a full and independent investigation into the targeting of journalists by Israel as it initiated its wars on Gaza and Lebanon after October 7th 2023. Israel has tried to avoid publicity about its war crimes and has both restricted access to Gaza and also particularly targeted journalists for killing, with nearly 300 journalists killed in Gaza, more than the total of journalists that died in the entire Second World War!

On October 13th 2023, Collins and a group of highly visibly identified journalists were hit by two shells, which eyewitnesses at the scene said came from Israeli Merkava tanks positioned nearby, wounding Collins and several others and also killing one journalist. As a US citizen, Collins approached both State Department and the Biden and Trump administrations to get answers and transparency but was met with “deafening silence.” In February 2024, a United Nations inquiry determined that the Israeli tank had caused the death and injuries by launching two 120mm shells at a group of “clearly identifiable journalists”, in breach of international law. “The firing at civilians, in this instance clearly identifiable journalists, constitutes a violation of UNSCR 1701 (2006) and international law,” said the seven-page Unifil report, referring to Security Council resolution 1701.

The point to be made is that the United States, reviled throughout much of the world for its cover-up of Israel atrocities in the Middle East, has nothing to gain from sending out ambassadors who are little more than apologists for Israel. Nor does it benefit when it goes to extremes to cover up Israeli crimes, including its unconscionable denial of the genocide that is still going on. American citizens, like Collins, Corrie and Abu Akleh, who get caught up in Israeli war crimes are among those who wind up paying the price and the impression that the United States does not play fair when it comes to supporting the rule of law does serious damage to our country in terms of its international relations. And what does the United States gain in return for all that from Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel? Absolutely nothing?

Original at Unz.com  https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/ambassador-mike-huckabee-strikes-again/

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org