US Amb. Huckabee assures continued support for Israel as VP Vance refuses to denounce anti-Israel Republicans

Amid the ongoing clashes over support for Israel that have been roiling the Republican Party these last few weeks, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee affirmed that his support for Israel remains based on faith, while Vice President JD Vance again declined to confront rising anti-Israel sentiment in the party.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Huckabee recounted witnessing Biblical prophecies being fulfilled in his experience of over 50 years of repeated visits to Israel.

“Unlike for some people who would be in culture shock, I feel very much at home. And I am very comfortable here, and I love it here,” Huckabee said.

The ambassador has repeatedly stressed his faith-based support for Israel and the Jewish people these past weeks, as a “civil war” has broken out within the Republican Party after several influential voices turned against Israel.

The most popular of these voices has been former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, who has been hosting anti-Israeli and antisemitic activists on his massively popular online show for months, without challenging their ideas.

“I’m very sad for Tucker, who has revealed a level of hate toward me and other Christians,” Huckabee said, referring to Carlson calling Christian Zionism a “brain virus” and “heresy” during an interview with avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes.

“I’m not sure Tucker is the right person to give me a theology lesson or to define what a ‘real Christian’ is. I’ll leave that to God. Tucker should as well,” said Huckabee.

“What troubles me is that many young people have been raised in churches that kind of gave them a soft shoe on the Bible,” the ordained minister added.

“Christian heritage is built upon a Jewish foundation,” Huckabee affirmed. “Without the Jewish foundation, there is no Christian faith.”

A recent survey conducted by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research found that 17% of Republicans hold views it categorized as “anti-Jewish,” while noting that consistent church attendance is the strongest predictor against holding such views.

Alongside Huckabee, leading Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Ted Cruz have led the charge condemning antisemitic and anti-Israel statements from influencers like Carlson, Candace Owens, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and others.

However, Vice President JD Vance has so far tried to strike a balancing act, refusing to vocally condemn these figures while urging Republicans to focus on more important issues.

In an interview with the website Unherd that was published on Monday, Vance argued that antisemitic views are largely caused by a “real backlash” to American foreign policy of the past decades.

“Because 99% of Republicans, and I think probably 97% of Democrats, do not hate Jewish people for being Jewish,” Vance said. “What is actually happening is that there is a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy. I think we already had that conversation and not try to shut it down. Most Americans aren’t antisemitic. They’re never going to be antisemitic, and I think we should focus on the real debate."

Vance noted he happened “to believe that Israel is an important ally,  that there are certain things that we’re certainly going to work together on.”

“But we’re also going to have very substantive disagreements with Israel, and that’s OK. And we should be able to say, ‘We agree with Israel on that issue, and we disagree with Israel on this other issue’.”

“Having that conversation is, I think, much less comfortable for a lot of people, because they want to focus on Nick Fuentes instead of on: why is Nick Fuentes gaining popularity or gaining notoriety?”

He reiterated this point at the Turning Point USA AmericaFest on Sunday, where he gave the closing address to a summit dominated by controversy over Ben Shapiro’s searing indictment of the “cowardice” shown by conservatives who refuse to vocally condemn Carlson, Owens etc.

In an apparent rebuke to Shapiro, Vance said, “We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”

The vice president has stridently refused to endorse a side in this conflict, but has downplayed the antisemitism problem several times, recently saying he doesn’t see “simmering antisemitism that’s exploding” among young conservatives.

Carlson said in his speech at the conference that “There are people who are mad at JD Vance, and they’re stirring up a lot of this in order to make sure he doesn’t get the nomination,” while praising Vance as “the one person” holding to the “core idea of the Trump coalition,” which he said was “America first.”

On the other side, Erika Kirk, the widow of murdered Charlie Kirk, who was a lifelong partisan of Israel arguing for faith-based support for the Jewish State, endorsed Vance as the next president.

Erika Kirk said on Thursday that Turning Point wanted Vance “elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.”

In his speech, the vice president firmly rejected “purity tests” and said he “didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform.”

While acknowledging differences of opinion in the conservative camp, Vance stressed that the movement shouldn’t have boundaries besides strong patriotism.

“We don’t care if you’re white or black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring, or somewhere in between,” he said, “We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”