Senate confirmation hearings began last Tuesday for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel, an Evangelical Christian whose steadfast support for Israel in the battle against terror stands in stark contrast to the pro-Qatar strategy launched by Trump’s chief negotiator Steve Witkoff.
Speaking to Tucker Carlson, an outspoken critic of Israel, chief Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff praised the role of Qatar, a chief sponsor of Hamas, calling claims Qatar is “not well motivated … preposterous.”
Witkoff has business ties worth $623 million to the Emirate of Qatar, which is considered the home of the Muslim Brotherhood and hosted late Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi for years. Terror organization Hamas, which brutally massacred over 1200 people on Oct. 7 2023, including 32 Americans, is the Gaza arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and has been funded with $1.8 billion by Qatar. Qatar hosted the Hamas leadership in luxury hotels, who accrued personal fortunes of over $11 billion. Qatar funds the anti-American, pro-Hamas propaganda network Al-Jazeera, which has been banned in Israel as an Hamas front.
Speaking to Tucker Carlson, Witkoff called the Qatari leadership “good, decent people” who “want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker.”
Carlson noted that Qataris are “almost universally accused in the US Media of being agents of Iran.”
Witkoff called these accusations “preposterous.”
“Look, they’re a Muslim nation. In the past, they’ve had some views that are a little bit more radical … from an Islamist standpoint than they are today, but it’s moderated quite a bit,” Witkoff said.
Speaking to Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday, Witkoff admitted “I thought we had a deal with Hamas, but maybe that’s just me getting duped.”
Asked by Carlson what it is like to deal with Hamas, Witkoff had to admit that “I’ve never really been in the same room as them, which is a little bit weird, wouldn’t you say? Like a negotiation where you don’t have the other party.”
Wittkoff called peace in Gaza “a prerequisite” and “a condition precedent to Saudi normalizing. And if they normalize, we’re building on the framework of the Abraham Peace Accords, which of course is the President’s creation. He wants the Abraham Peace Accords to be augmented and we’re in the process of doing it. We think we’re going to be announcing several new countries who are joining.”
This approach seems to be the opposite of what led to the Abraham Accords in the first Trump Presidency, by ignoring Jihadi “Palestinian” Arab demands and negotiating directly with Arab Gulf states that seek normnalization with Israel.
Israeli commentator Yishai Fleischer called Witkoff “weak”: “He’s got Biden talking points. If you just do the right thing in Israel, by giving away land to the jihadis, the Saudis will make peace with Israel and then the region will be stable. That’s such malarkey.”
“Stop being duped,” Fleischer said. “And stop being sold out to (qatari) interests.”
In marked contrast to Witkoff, Trump’s designated Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee took a much more robust line in his Senate testimony March 25:
“I cannot imagine under any circumstances that any right-minded person would find it acceptable to support or to even acknowledge that there was justification in any way for the massacre of innocent civilians on October 7th. If I’m confirmed, I will be absolutely clear to carry the president’s policies. They have been clear that Hamas will have no future in Gaza. It can’t,” Huckabee said.
The attack of Oct. 7, 2023 “was not simply cold-blooded murder in which people came across the borders and shot innocent people,” Huckabee said: “They massacred them. And they did it in the way that was most physically painful and in the way that was most personally humiliating. And worse, they video-taped themselves doing it because they were proud of it. They published it with pride, and they announced repeatedly that they would do it again.”
On Nov. 5, 2023, Hamas held a packed screening of the most gruesome footage of their Oct. 7 massacre in the yard of their Headquarters in the so-called Al-Shifa “Hospital”, to cheering crowds. Al-Shifa was a Hamas command center riddled with tunnels and arms depots posing as a hopital, which has since been leveled by the IDF.
“Hamas is not a governmnt, it’s a terrorist organization, and they acted like it, and must be treated as such. And if confirmed, I would hope that this unfortunate horrific war that has resulted in many, many deaths, including Americans, the taking of hostages for a longer period of time than even the hostages in 1979 were taken during the Iranian takeover, that all of that could come to an end. And there could be accountability for what was done to Jewish people on October the 7th of 2023,” Huckabee testified.
“This is not just about Israel. It is about us, and if we don’t stand with them, they stand alone. And if they fall alone, we fall next,” Huckabee said. “Israel is the appetizer, and (the US) is the entree.”
Huckabee, a Southern Baptist pastor, first visited Israel when he was 17 in 1952, and has since visited “approximately 100” times.
He refers to Judea and Samaria by their biblical names and has endorsed annexation of Israel’s biblical heartland.
“There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee has said, referring to the biblical names of the home of Jacob and Abraham. “There is no such thing as settlements — they’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There is no such thing as an occupation.”
Luke Hilton from The Israel Guys called Huckabee “the first non-Jewish ambassador in years”.
“We played music with Governor Huckabee in the Psagot winery 15 years ago. He has a record of strong support for Israel, including sovereignty in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.”
So ironically, the Trump Mideast policy now faces a split between a New York Jew, Witkoff, who seems comfortable with Qatar and Hamas, and a Christian Zionist ambassador, Huckabee, who recognizes that Hamas must be destroyed to reach any sort of peace in Gaza.
The Israel Guys: Luke Hilton, Joshua Waller, Rabbi Ari Abramowitz, and Rabbi Jeremy Gimpel discuss the Witkoff-Huckabee split:
Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), exposes Qatar’s influence on western society on the Caroline Glick Show:
