Ambassador Mike Huckabee Places Prayer from President Trump in Western Wall of Jerusalem on Good Friday, Vows “Iran Will Never Have a Nuclear Weapon”
On this historic Good Friday, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has assumed his post and visited the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, depositing a prayer written by President Donald J. Trump in the wall. “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” Huckabee stressed.
Visiting the HaKotel (Western Wall) was the ambassador’s first action in Jerusalem, less than 24 hours after arriving to take up his post, even before he presented his credentials to Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
“As you heard from being at the wall a moment ago on this, my very first day as the Ambassador to the state of Israel, it was such an honor and an incredible privilege to place on behalf of the President of the United States, President Donald J. Trump, a prayer that he wrote in his own hand and initialed, handed to me in person last Thursday at the White House with the hope that I would bring it and place it in the Wall, with the best wishes and the prayers of the American people for the peace of Jerusalem and for the return of the hostages. So I have done that with an extraordinary sense of honor, joy, and also a sense of great responsibility,” Huckabee said.
“The relationship between the United States and Israel is not ceremonial,” Huckabee said. “It is deep. It is rooted in our love of democracy, in our love of the Judeo-Christian understanding that every life has worth and value. And it is one of the reasons that the president prays that every hostage will be released immediately. And it’s why I wear this (yellow ribbon) on my lapel today. But I want to express my appreciation to the Rabbi (Shmuel Rabinowitz) and to all the people who accommodated our visit here today. But also, I really do come with a sense of hope and optimism that God will do great things here in this holy city.”
Asked about the fate of the hostages, Huckbee remarked that “I don’t have any updates that I’m authorized to release. All I can tell you is that every effort continues to be made for every hostage to be released, those who are living and those who remains are still in Gaza as a result of the horrific massacre that was inflicted upon the Israeli people and several American citizens as well.”
Commenting on his relationship with President Trump, Huckabee said that “As you may know, the ambassador doesn’t make the policy. He carries it out. So I tell people I’m not a chemist. I’m a pharmacist. Somebody else named the President who was elected, he’ll be the one who will make the formula. He will give it to me and I will dispense it. So when those instructions come, I’ll be here to deliver them.”
Asked about his relationship with his host government, Huckabee said, “I would never try to inflict my view upon the Israeli government. They’re dealing with very challenging circumstances. I have great respect for what they’re trying to get done and the manner in which they’re getting it done. And so I’m not going to second-guess their efforts whatsoever. It would be inappropriate for me as a representative of the U.S. government to evaluate what the Israeli government is doing.”
Huckabee has visited the Holy Land more than 100 times since 1973 with thousands of US Christians, and remarked on being the first Evangelical Pastor to serve as Ambassador to the Holy Land:
“It gives me an extraordinary sense of personal joy to have been named by the President as an Evangelical Christian believer to take this post. And to be honest, I was a little concerned that maybe there would be some resistance to that, on behalf of Israeli people and Jewish people. But what I found is that just the opposite. And many people, my Jewish friends, have expressed this over and again, that if I were Jewish and came as ambassador, they’d say, ‘Well, of course, he supports Israel. He’s Jewish, he doesn’t have a choice.’ I say to them: I have a choice, and I make my choice to support Israel and show my friendship – that has existed, by the way, for 52 years from my very first trip here, which was in 1973, when I was a month shy of my 18th birthday. So I’ve been here (at the Western Wall) probably several dozen of the times that I’ve been here, and it never grows old. I never get to the point where I don’t learn something. I never get to the point where I don’t experience something, being in this very magnificent place.”
Regarding the conflict in Gaza,. Huckabee said that “If Hamas had been a civil people, if they had been something less than savages that massacred in the most vicious way innocent civilians – they did not attack soldiers, they attacked civilians. They attacked women, children, babies, helpless elderly people. They brought this upon themselves.”
“Everything that people see there is not the result of anything other than the vicious hatred that Hamas harbored and carried out on October the 7th. And they are paying the price. And tragically so many innocent people are paying the price for the sins and the evil of these monsters of Hamas.”
“Israel is an incredibly important ally to us, and people sometimes only think that Israel benefits from the United States”, Huckabee said. “The truth is the United States benefits a great deal from Israel, and not just militarily. We certainly benefit from the technology, from the innovation, from defense systems which were developed here. But there’s a much more important and long-lasting side of where Americans benefit. In agriculture, technology, medical advancement. So it is not a one-way street. The United States and its citizens are directly the beneficiaries of some of the extraordinary achievements and accomplishments and innovations of people here in Israel.”
President Trump “has made very clear: Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. They will not be in a position where they can threaten the peace, not just of Israel, but all the people of the rest of the world. Let’s never forget that the Iranians have not simply threatened Israel with extinction – which they have repeatedly over 46 years – they have also threatened the United States. They don’t just say ‘Death to Israel,’ they say ‘Death to America.’ And there’s an old saying that when people tell you over and again that they’re going to kill you, you might want to take them seriously.”
“So I don’t think this is just about Israel. Israel has often been called the Little Satan and the US the Great Satan. I’ll put it in simpler terms: For the Iranians, Israel is the appetizer and the US is the entrée. Whatever happens at the hands of the Iranians to Israel is the intended happening to those of us in the United States.”
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