Huckabee Rebuts Claims About Israel After Carlson Comments on Theo Von Podcast
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee released a wide-ranging video message from Jerusalem this week defending Israel’s war in Gaza and the US-Israel alliance, responding to growing criticism from conservative media figures after commentator Tucker Carlson questioned evangelical support for Israel on comedian Theo Von’s podcast. Huckabee framed his remarks as answers to questions posed by American pastors who recently visited Israel, but the timing placed the video squarely within an intensifying debate among US conservatives and Christian leaders over Gaza, Israel, and antisemitism.
Speaking from the US Embassy in Jerusalem, Huckabee rejected claims that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. “The answer to that is demonstrably and laughably no, they’re not,” he said, arguing that genocide requires intentional mass killing of civilians, which he said “simply never happened in Gaza.” He traced the war to the October 7 Hamas attack, describing “a shocking attack on civilians” in which terrorists “came not just to kill, but to massacre and to mutilate.”
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Huckabee said Israel had the right to defend itself and blamed Hamas for prolonging the war by refusing to release hostages. He credited President Donald Trump with forcing an end to the fighting, saying, “It took President Trump’s absolute threat and promise that Hamas would be no more to get them to finally end the war, have a ceasefire, and return the hostages.” He added that Israel’s military restraint disproved genocide claims, saying, “If Israel had wanted to do genocide, they could have done it in two and a half hours.”
The ambassador also dismissed accusations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal as “misinformation and … sheer ignorance,” and rejected claims that Israel attacked Qatar, saying a single missile strike targeted “a terrorist … responsible for the murder of Israeli citizens,” not the state itself.
Huckabee’s video followed Carlson’s appearance on Theo Von’s show, where Carlson criticized evangelical leaders for backing Israel’s war, accusing some of endorsing violence against civilians and calling Christian Zionism a “dangerous heresy.” Carlson named Dr. Mike Evans, a prominent Christian Zionist leader, prompting Evans to challenge Carlson to a public debate and warn that such rhetoric fuels antisemitism.
Addressing conspiracy theories circulating online, Huckabee dismissed as “ridiculous” and “reckless” allegations that Israel used Jeffrey Epstein to blackmail US government officials. Epstein, a financier accused of sexually abusing minors, died in custody in 2019 while facing federal sex-trafficking charges.
The ambassador closed by arguing that US support for Israel is strategic as well as moral. “The enemies of Israel are the enemies of the United States,” he said, adding that intelligence sharing, military innovation, medical technology, and energy projects provide what he described as a “1200% return on investment” for Americans.
