Huckabee blames ‘biblical illiteracy’ for waning support for Israel in US

US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee says that the recent souring of public opinion in the United States towards Israel is the result of a lack of “biblical literacy”.

In an interview with NewsNation on Thursday, the ambassador suggested there were three sources of declining support for Israel.

He cited disinformation and foreign propaganda, a hatred of those who believe “there is a God and that he’s made up the rules for life”, and not knowing the Bible.

“You add all that together, I guess you just want to be mad at Israel and blame them for everything,” he said.

Huckabee claimed that accusations of genocide in Gaza and that Israel is an apartheid state are false, and Americans would have a more favourable view of Israel if they would “look at the truth”.

A Pew Research poll in April indicated that, although favourable opinion of Israel remained relatively strong at 65 percent among white evangelicals, such as Huckabee, 60 percent of the US adult population held an unfavourable view of Israel.

An AP-NORC poll from July suggested that Americans who believed Israel committed genocide in Gaza outnumbered those who did not, although roughly half said they did not know enough to answer.

For Israel, the decline in support has become alarming as prominent critics of Israel won several elections, including Zohran Mamdani, who became New York City mayor.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used part of his speech at the United Nations General Assembly to lambast Mamdani, claiming that Jews in New York told him that they no longer feel safe in the city.

Netanyahu, too, has seen declining popularity in the US, with the same Pew survey indicating more than half of Americans did not trust him to do the right thing regarding world affairs.

Mamdani has previously said that he opposes hatred and bigotry, including anti-Semitism, but promised to execute an International Criminal Court warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes when the Israeli leader next visited New York City – before eventually concluding that the city did not have the legal authority to do so.