Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has drawn sharp criticism for accusing Britain’s Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband of ‘Jew hate’ after the latter condemned conditions in Gaza. The accusation has sparked outrage given that Miliband himself is Jewish and lost family members in the Holocaust.
The controversy erupted after Miliband released a video earlier this week describing what he heard about Gaza as ‘horrific’. He stressed that the UK government must ‘act more decisively’ on the crisis. Israel’s foreign ministry responded by claiming that ‘facts matter less’ to the British foreign secretary when making videos for political aunces.
Huckabee, who is not Jewish, then amplified Israel’s . He shared the foreign ministry’s post and wrote: ‘The Brits have lost it. The Jew hate of their government knows no boundaries and knows no facts.’
What was Huckabee thinking? Commentators swiftly condemned the remarks as absurd and diplomatically reckless. Mehdi Hasan, editor-in-chief of Zeteo, highlighted the irony of a Christian evangelical accusing a Jewish foreign secretary of antisemitism. Shashank Joshi of The Economist noted how the administration continues to ‘astonish’ with how it addresses its closest allies.
Miliband was born in London to Jewish parents. His family history makes Huckabee’s accusation particularly inflammatory, raising questions about diplomatic protocol between traditional allies.
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