Mike Huckabee Should Resign

Foreign Affairs The Milstein scandal shows the ambassador undercutting American policy and the express wishes of the president. The New York Times reports that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee’s senior adviser, David Milstein, suppressed an embassy report and obstructed efforts by our elected representatives in Congress to obtain information. That in itself is a scandal—but it’s the gravity of the information in question that makes this story rise to the level of demanding immediate and formal accountability to American citizens. In March, U.S. senators wrote to Huckabee demanding answers about American citizens killed in the West Bank since January 2022. Among them were the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and Amer Rabee, who was just 14 years old. The senators said no one had been held accountable. This cannot stand. These bereaved families cannot be asked to accept an embassy accused of actively working against their interests in order to protect the reputation of a foreign government whose soldiers and settlers killed their loved ones. And as their fellow Americans, none of the rest of us will accept it either. No, Mike Huckabee must resign. And if he refuses, President Donald Trump must remove him from office. The Times report cites 15 U.S. officials and dozens of documents, collectively pointing to a sustained effort to sanitize reporting about the government of the corrupt and unpopular Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The conspiracy went on despite officials elsewhere in the Trump administration—including the president himself—expressing opposition to Netanyahu’s increasingly radical actions. Milstein allegedly blocked a warning that settlement expansion could violate Trump’s opposition to West Bank annexation. Reporting on Israeli inaction against settler violence was at one point replaced with a propagandistic cable praising a crackdown. This is much more than office politics. These are matters of life and death. When Washington receives a false picture of violence, the people enduring it lose another chance of protection in a region where time is now of the essence. Whether whole communities will remain in the land where they have lived for centuries can depend on their interests being accurately relayed to the rest of the world. Some of those communities are the ancient Christian towns of the Holy Land, where they have worshiped since the time of Christ’s ministry there. But thanks to the corruption and double-dealing of Huckabee’s office, when our elected representatives asked about dead American citizens, we were denied a full accounting. Even more concretely: That means families lost access to justice—and to the rights afforded to us all as American citizens. Huckabee denies the allegations, of course, expecting far more sympathy than he has any right to expect. While he claims to have no knowledge of the scandal, officials who spoke to the Times described instances when he helped suppress or recast reporting and others when he restrained Milstein—which, far from exonerating the ambassador, only suggests to me that he was that much more familiar with his aide’s mischief. And “mischief” is hardly the word for some of the downright sinister actions now being revealed to the public. Responsible Statecraft reported last year that an embassy cable warning of looming famine in Gaza never reached Washington; Milstein instead sent favorable reporting about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Consider what that means for a hungry child: His suffering can become invisible to the very officials with the power to intervene. Milstein, the stepson of neoconservative talk show host Mark Levin, also circulated a wedding invitation seeking cash gifts from a guest list including Israelis. Huckabee’s very mature response to the scrutiny included calling the reporting outlet, POLITICO, “Politicrap.” An ambassador entrusted with American lives should be capable of answering serious questions with the seriousness they deserve. Perhaps if this were the first mark against Huckabee’s character and competence, I would be writing a different column. But there have been many red flags—failures of judgment that extend far beyond Milstein. In July 2025, Huckabee hosted the infamous convicted traitor and Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Pollard had served 30 years for his misdeeds. The White House said it had no advance knowledge of the secret meeting. Huckabee later said he personally approved it. An ambassador willing to receive a man who betrayed American intelligence should show at least as much solicitude for the families of Americans killed abroad. He also regularly lashes out at those—including foreign dignitaries—who oppose Israeli policies. And not just any Israeli policies, but the most contentious Israeli actions of all, including its internationally condemned backing of illegal settlements in the West Bank. When Irish officials considered restricting trade with Israeli settlements, Huckabee reached for a drunken-Irish stereotype, asked whether they had fallen into a vat of Guinness, and ordered: “Sober up Ireland!” He wanted Ireland to apologize to Israel. American diplomacy had become a vehicle for abusing another country on the settlement movement’s behalf. Then came his February interview with Tucker Carlson. Asked about a biblical entitlement extending from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing enormous stretches of neighboring Arab countries, Huckabee said: “It would be fine if they took it all.” The remark drew a torrent of condemnations from throughout the Arab world, amounting to a serious international diplomatic incident. But Huckabee shrugged it off. I called for Huckabee’s recall then. The case has only grown stronger. Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox His posture cannot be excused as loyalty to the administration. Trump has explicitly opposed West Bank annexation, and Vance has reiterated that policy in Israel. An embassy that withholds warnings about violations of that position would be obstructing the president it supposedly serves—to say nothing of the will of the American people, which has increasingly soured on the brutal Netanyahu regime. The United States needs an ambassador whose concern for Israeli security does not extinguish his concern for everyone else. Huckabee’s tenure has become an obstacle to his own office’s duties. He should go, all records should be preserved, and every allegation should be independently investigated. The families of nine Palestinian-Americans have already lost someone they love. Neither they nor the rest of us should be asked to sacrifice the truth as well. In order to reassure Americans that our citizenship means something to our government, and that our rights will not be compromised if they run up against the interests of a foreign government, Huckabee must no longer hold any power over the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.