Why is Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee Mocking Catholics as They’re Slaughtered?
This morning, July 17th, Israel’s military directly struck Holy Family Catholic Church, leveling the only Catholic parish in Gaza. At least two, including an elderly woman and a janitor, were killed. The pastor was wounded. The church has long served as a refuge for victims of the brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in the region, and it’s still not clear what will become of the hundreds of Palestinian refugees who have been sheltering on the Catholic property.
https://x.com/CatholicSat/status/1945801117243228302
“Anti-Catholic bigotry is the last acceptable prejudice.” It’s a saying so pervasive among Catholic intellectual types that I can’t even call to mind who said it first. It might sound overwrought and self-pitying (especially coming from a Catholic like myself), but there sure are times when it has a ring of truth to it.
Now is one of those times.
Because the inexcusable actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime aren’t happening in a vacuum. They’re happening with the direct and indirect support of American leaders – men elected to public service by Catholics in the United States.
And it could not get any clearer at this point that now is the time for Catholic constituents to raise their voices not just against the direct Israeli violence, but against the American bigotry that sets the stage for it.
When U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee – a Protestant with an English last name – publicly invokes the crassest ethnic stereotypes about a Catholic nation, and does so specifically to jeer at them taking action against criminals who’ve been persecuting Christians in the birthplace of the Catholic faith, it looks an awful lot like he, at least, believes that anti-Catholic bigotry is acceptable.
Ireland is considering legislation that would cut off trade with illegal Jewish settlements in the Holy Land. The potential law would come amid an international firestorm of outrage on behalf of Palestinian Catholics and other Christians in the West Bank, who are begging Western Christian leaders like Huckabee to stand up for them.
Their complaint? The very Jewish settlers whom the Irish now are trying to hold accountable have been mercilessly persecuting the Christians of the Holy Land – as well as other indigenous Palestinians, Muslims with whom our fellow Christians have made common cause against the Israel-backed thugs.
Just in the last few days, Jewish settler groups have set fire to an ancient Christian burial ground in Taybeh, the last remaining 100% Christian village in the Holy Land. The arson attack nearly destroyed the Church of St. George, a 5th-Century Christian holy site, and was condemned by the village’s three pastors, Catholic, Orthodox, and Melkite. The priests directly called on Huckabee to advocate for the persecuted Christian community there, and my organization, the Vulnerable People Project, published an open letter and petition asking the ambassador to listen to them.
This week, a Jewish settler gang beat a 20-year-old Palestinian-American to death in the West Bank – a U.S. citizen from Florida! Huckabee responded with a tweet claiming to have spoken with Israeli officials about the murder. But still no visit – and still no response to the priests or to our open letter.
So with that background in mind, forgive me if I begin to see a concerning pattern in Huckabee’s response to Ireland’s effort.
His statement to the Irish honestly reads as so un-American, so haughty, and so anti-Catholic that you’d think it came from a history book.
“Did the Irish fall into a vat of Guinness & propose something so stupid that it would be attributed to act of diplomatic intoxication?” Huckabee wrote. “Sober up Ireland! Call [Israel’s Foreign Ministry] & say you’re sorry!”
https://x.com/GovMikeHuckabee/status/1945324801930772694
You’d think he was talking to a tiny upstart fringe group about a matter of no importance to almost anybody. But no. The escalating violence of illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank is rapidly becoming an international story. It’s nowhere near approaching the gravity of the horrific events in Gaza – but the difference is in degree and not in kind.
Pope Leo issued a powerful statement within hours of this morning’s attack on Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza. It should not be missed, however, that he has also forcefully and repeatedly spoken out against the Israel-backed settler groups who persecute his spiritual flock in the West Bank.
Mainstream conservative Catholic groups in the U.S. like CatholicVote have published reports on the persecution in the West Bank, as well as exclusive interviews with Catholic leaders and victims of settler violence in places like Taybeh and Bethlehem.
Such groups are also showing increasing concern – and self-aware outrage from their Catholic perspective – about the events in Gaza itself.
Yet Huckabee somehow thought it was appropriate this week to scoff at our concerns? To evoke the trope of the drunken Irish-Catholic mongrel? To call on the general public to join him in ridiculing Catholics who are trying, however imperfectly, to address these ongoing attacks on our coreligionists?
“Be sober and vigilant,” wrote Saint Peter during a time of great persecution against the Church in the Holy Land, as “our opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)
That goes double for people in positions of power and influence, and triple during times of serious conflict.
As a Christian and as an American official at the center of all the high moral stakes of the conflicts in the Holy Land, and with Catholic eyes around the world directly on him and on the anti-Christian violence running rampant under his nose, Huckabee is making only one thing clear to members of the Catholic Church:
That it’s not the Irish who need to “sober up.”
It’s you, Mr. Ambassador.
Readers can find our open letter and petition calling on Ambassador Huckabee to “be vigilant” and visit his brethren in the West Bank by clicking here.
📖 Read my new book Dispatches from the Great Campaign: Defending the Vulnerable from the Front Lines of History