President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of Mike Huckabee as United States ambassador to Israel represents a break with recent tradition. The last gentile US ambassador to Israel was James Cunningham, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2008.
Although there have been several non-Jewish ambassadors to the Jewish state, the appointment of Huckabee sets a new precedent and signals what appears to be a new direction in the US-Israel relationship. Huckabee is unabashed about both his unequivocal support for the Jewish people’s national claim to the entire land of Israel as well as the reasons he holds this view, which stem from the biblical basis of his Christian faith.
In describing the realization that he came to upon visiting Israel for the first time in 1973, Huckabee recently said that “God had set this land aside for His people 3,800 years ago when he gave Abraham the title deed to all of Israel and said: ‘Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed’” (Genesis 12:3).
For Evangelical Christians like Huckabee, supporting Israel is straightforward, even as it is often misunderstood. The most repeated prophecy in the Bible is that the nation of Israel, scattered to the ends of the earth, will one day return to its land after a lengthy exile.
In the words of Deuteronomy 30, the first time in the Bible this prophecy appears, “Even if you are scattered to the ends of the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and take you. He will bring you back to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. He will make you more numerous and more prosperous than your forefathers.”
Christians who take the Bible seriously look at the modern State of Israel, with millions of Jews ingathered from all corners of the world living in a prosperous first-world economy, and they understand that God’s promises are real.
For many American Christians, support for Israel is not about eschatology and fulfillment of the prophecies but rather a simple connection that is as historic as it is spiritual. Vice president-elect JD Vance, a Catholic, explained US support for Israel as follows:
“A majority of citizens of this country think that their savior – and I count myself a Christian – was born, died, and resurrected in that narrow little strip of territory off the Mediterranean. The idea that there is ever going to be an American foreign policy that doesn’t care a lot about that slice of the world is preposterous.”
On another recent occasion, Vance described the US-Israel relationship as “an expression of deeper things, of cultural affinity, and shared heritage and values.”
Or, to quote Huckabee again, “There is no explanation for Israel, nor is there an explanation for the United States, apart from the intervention of God. I don’t see how anyone with a semblance of intelligence can see the miracle of Israel or, for that matter, the miracle of the United States, and come to any other conclusion [than] that this is not just man’s doing, this is God’s doing.”
Spiritual rather than political
FRAMING THE US-Israel relationship in spiritual rather than geopolitical terms is a welcome development. The Abraham Accords have a deeper significance than just a series of normalization agreements. Despite the realpolitik that informs the thinking of career diplomats in the State Department and, frankly, even most Jewish supporters of Israel, the real glue that binds most of America to Israel is the Bible. And this matters now more than ever.
The enemies of Israel, both in the Middle East and in the West, reject Israel’s legitimacy and existence because they reject the Bible. The connective tissue of the bizarre and unholy alliance between the progressive, atheist Left and jihadist Islam is a rejection of the truth of the Bible Jews and Christians revere and of the biblical underpinnings of Western civilization. To speak of the alliance between the US and Israel only in terms of geopolitics and national security is to miss what is happening right now globally.
The cultural struggle happening in America and throughout the Western world can be summed up in one question: Is the Bible true? Political conservatives from Hungary to Brazil, to the Netherlands, and the United States understand that they are fighting for the values and way of life bequeathed to them by their Bible-believing ancestors.
Christianity is the enemy of both the left-wing progressives and the Islamists who are now overwhelming Europe. It’s no wonder that those on the right in all these countries are also overwhelmingly pro-Israel. We have reached a point where the separation between politics and faith has disappeared.
Henry Kissinger famously said, “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” But Kissinger was not a man of faith. By appointing Mike Huckabee to represent the US in Jerusalem, president-elect Donald Trump has signaled that the US-Israel relationship is about something far more permanent than politics.
The writer is the executive director of Israel365Action.com, and the host of the Shoulder to Shoulder podcast.