Mike Huckabee, the new U.S. ambassador to Israel, arrived in the Jewish state on Thursday and will officially take up his position in Jerusalem next week.
The former governor of Arkansas landed in Israel toward the end of the week-long Passover holiday and ahead of Easter Sunday after recently being confirmed by the U.S. Senate. He will present his credentials to Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday at an official ceremony in Jerusalem.
“We are on our way to Israel,” Huckabee tweeted on Wednesday, ahead of the transatlantic flight with his wife, Janet, and their two dogs. “Our dogs have no idea how long this flight is going to be, so don’t tell them. This is not a trip but a complete move.”
The 69-year-old conservative evangelical pastor, TV host and two-time Republican presidential candidate has visited Israel scores of times, and led thousands of participants on solidarity tours over the past half-century since his first trip to Israel right out of high school, just before the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
A long-time champion of Israel’s cause, he has been a staunch supporter of Israel’s rights to the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, and the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Over many years, he has also worked to fight the BDS movement.
The U.S. Senate voted 53-46 last week to confirm Huckabee as U.S. ambassador to Israel, with Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) being the sole Democrat to back Huckabee for the high-profile posting amid the war in Gaza and regional turmoil.
The U.S. envoy told Fox News after his nomination was approved that the first thing he was going to do in Israel was take a prayer given to him by U.S. President Donald Trump in a recent meeting and place it in the Western Wall on behalf of the American people.
