An Open Letter to US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee
The Honorable Mike Huckabee
United States Embassy in Israel
40 David Flusser Street
Jerusalem 9378322, Israel
Dear Ambassador Mike Huckabee,
On July 7th, the village of Taybeh in the Holy Land made international news after a group of Israeli settlers set fire to its Christian cemetery and nearly destroyed the Church of St. George in an arson attack, one of the oldest and most important Christian holy sites in the West Bank.
As I spoke with my Christian contacts in the Holy Land this week, I was pained by memories of the conversations I had with them during a recent visit. They spoke with great dignity of their heritage. This community can trace their lineage all the way back to the first Jews who accepted the Gospel and received the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room.
But they were afraid. And they did not speak only about fearing Israel’s mighty army and powerful politicians, and they didn’t only dread the Jewish settlers setting fire to their homes and destroying their farmlands and businesses.
No, they spoke fearfully of you, Mike Huckabee – my friend and fellow countryman and a dignitary specifically assigned to represent our Christian nation’s interests to the Israeli government.
Taybeh isn’t just any town. It is the only remaining town in the Holy Land still populated entirely by indigenous Christians. It’s a town explicitly mentioned in Scripture as the home of saints. Our Lord Jesus Christ spent nights there with His friends before His arrest, death, and resurrection in Jerusalem – just nine miles away.
Now? The Christian population in the Holy Land has been reduced to about 1% as Jewish settlers – with the clear backing of Israeli officials and soldiers – illegally and violently drive them out. During another settler attack in Taybeh just last month, the gangs reportedly put up signs in town reading “YOU HAVE NO FUTURE HERE.”
While Israel pummeled their fellow Palestinian Christians in Gaza and imposed draconian new travel restrictions that keep members of the ancient Christian community in the West Bank from visiting relatives in neighboring towns, the residents of the Holy Land I spoke with last year were already living in fear. In Bethlehem, some even told me they were afraid this past year’s Christmas would be the last to be celebrated by Christians in the place of Christ’s birth.
“We’re afraid they will do to our churches what they have done to Gaza’s,” one pastor told me. Israel had bombed every church in Gaza, eliciting strong statements of solidarity from the Vatican and the Orthodox Church. Since then, Pope Leo XIV has also issued numerous statements of concern for the Christians of the West Bank, condemning the violence and intimidation of Jewish settler groups.
At the time, I thought the pastor’s fear was an irrational one. Now? On reflection, I am forced to ask myself a question that confirms the fears of the Holy Land’s Christians: Where are Mike Huckabee’s statements of solidarity?
“I know Ambassador Huckabee to be a devout and sincere man,” I told Christians in the West Bank earlier this year when they told me how they feared you. “He will listen to the voice of Christ.”
But will you? Will you be a friend to Christians in the birthplace of your faith – or will you remain a mere political operative, feared by your own people?
The three priests of Taybeh – Greek Orthodox, Latin, and Melkite – issued a powerful statement after July’s arson attack on St. George’s Church and Taybeh’s cemetery. They made clear it was not an isolated incident, but only the latest in an “ongoing and grave series” of “relentless attacks that threaten our very existence on this land.”
“In a scene that has become provocatively routine, settlers continue to graze their cattle in Taybeh's agricultural lands, including family-owned fields and areas near residential homes, without deterrence or intervention from the authorities,” they warned. “These violations go beyond provocation; they cause direct harm to olive trees–a vital source of livelihood for the people of Taybeh–and prevent farmers from accessing and cultivating their land.”
“Illegal settlement outposts” in Taybeh are continuing to “expand quietly under military protection,” they complained. “These outposts serve as a base for further assaults on the land and its people.”
The priests called on “local and international actors,” including you, ambassador, to intervene on behalf of the besieged Christians of Teybeh by “[applying] diplomatic pressure on the occupying authorities to halt settler actions….”
They also called for “international … delegations to conduct field visits, document the damages, and bear witness to the deteriorating reality on the ground.”
The anti-Christian violence boiling over in the Holy Land is happening right under your nose, ambassador. As an outspoken Christian and an official representative to the Israeli government, you are arguably more directly responsible for the fate of Christians in the West Bank than any other person on Earth – even more directly involved, as God’s providence would have it, than the region’s pastors.
I am calling on you to act on the responsibility that I believe Our Lord has imposed on you. Start by visiting Taybeh and Bethlehem and listening humbly to the Christian flock and their pastors. Put yourself not above them as a menacing, distant politician, but at their feet as their servant. God will reward your effort.
“We believe that the Holy Land cannot remain alive without its indigenous people. Forcibly removing farmers from their land, threatening their churches, and encircling their towns is a wound to the living heart of this nation,” Taybeh’s priests wrote in their letter. “Yet we remain steadfast in our shared faith and hope that truth and justice will ultimately prevail.”
I stand with them in that faith. Will you?
Sign our letter to Mike Huckabee: www.ProtectHolyLandChristians.com