The ambassador’s visit is a brazen attempt at intervention from a U.S. official in a foreign state’s domestic trial.
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U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee paid a visit to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, marking an unprecedented move to shield the man charged with crimes both domestically and internationally.
Huckabee called for the trial to be called off on social media. “I stopped by the trial of @IsraeliPM in Tel Aviv today. My conclusion? @realDonaldTrump is right…again,” he wrote.
Huckabee was referring to a post by U.S. President Donald Trump last month baselessly labelling the trial as a “witch hunt” and demanding that it be cancelled.
The ambassador reportedly said that he wasn’t there to intervene in the trial — even though he openly called for it to be thrown out. “The judges are not the ones who brought this indictment. The judges are great. Me being here has nothing to do with the judges, but with the fact that this whole trial is wrong,” he told reporters, per Axios.
Netanyahu was originally charged on counts of bribery, breach of trust and fraud six years ago, but the trial has been delayed for years. Netanyahu has long been accused of using military action to delay his trial, including the genocide in Gaza.
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Indeed, the prime minister was in court to provide testimony on the case, but the testimony was cut off early this morning when Israel struck Syria’s military headquarters in a major escalation of its strikes on the country.
Huckabee was seen holding a Bugs Bunny figurine in court. This has become a symbol of support for Netanyahu after prosecutors alleged that a Hollywood mogul from whom the prime minister is accused of taking bribes gave his son a Bugs Bunny stuffed animal at one point.
The ambassador’s visit and statements are a brazen attempt at intervention from a high-level U.S. official in a domestic trial in a foreign country.
Former U.S. ambassador and Deputy Chief of Mission in Israel Luis Moreno called the incident “bizarrely embarrassing & inappropriate.”
“No words to describe how wrong this is. Just shameful,” Moreno said in a post on social media.
Netanyahu is also wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for orchestrating the genocide in Gaza. Despite this, the Trump administration invited him for a visit to the U.S. last week, where he met with Trump and members of Congress from both sides of the aisle.
Huckabee’s show of support for Netanyahu comes just days after Israeli settlers, who are often backed and armed by Israeli officials, killed a 20-year-old Palestinian American, Sayfollah Musallet, while he was visiting land owned by his family in the occupied West Bank. Huckabee said that he has asked Israel to investigate the incident, calling it a “criminal and terrorist act” but declining to call for an independent U.S. investigation into his killing.
The visit also comes as Israel is reportedly preparing a plan to create a concentration camp in the ruins of Rafah, in Gaza, to herd Palestinians into as Israel continues its destruction of and genocide in the Strip. The goal is to concentrate all Palestinians in Gaza into the camp and prevent them from leaving, Israeli officials have said.
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