On Wednesday’s broadcast of WBUR’s “Here and Now,” Washington Post Reporter John Hudson discussed the nomination of Mike Huckabee to be the United States Ambassador to Israel by President-Elect Donald Trump and said that “For a number of Christian Evangelicals, which Huckabee identifies as, particularly those that take a literalist interpretation of the Bible, there is a strong emphasis on the covenant that God made to Abraham about the sanctity of Israel as a homeland for the Israelites, and, as a result, many Christian Evangelicals have turned that belief into a right-wing brand of Zionism that really has little place for the Palestinian people and does not view them as having a legitimate claim to the land.”
Hudson said, “So, he’s a Baptist minister. He’s taken a number of groups on religious trips to Israel. And there [are] a lot of Christian groups that visit Israel, from many different sects of Christianity. For a number of Christian Evangelicals, which Huckabee identifies as, particularly those that take a literalist interpretation of the Bible, there is a strong emphasis on the covenant that God made to Abraham about the sanctity of Israel as a homeland for the Israelites, and, as a result, many Christian Evangelicals have turned that belief into a right-wing brand of Zionism that really has little place for the Palestinian people and does not view them as having a legitimate claim to the land.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett