ATTACKING ISRAEL: IT'S OKAY IF YOU'RE A REPUBLICAN

You might not have noticed this because of all the attention being paid to the Jeffrey Epstein story, but Donald Trump's ambassador has been sharply critical of Israel recently, in ways that would have led to screaming headlines and loud denunciations if similar messages had been sent by a Democratic administration.

First, there was this story on Tuesday:

The United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, on Tuesday called on the Israeli authorities to “aggressively investigate” the death of a 20-year-old Palestinian-American citizen in a clash on Friday with Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, calling his killing a “murder” and a “criminal and terrorist act.”

Mr. Huckabee, who has been vocal about his support for settlement in the occupied West Bank — which is widely viewed as illegal in the international community — used uncharacteristically strong language in his statement condemning the death of Sayfollah Musallet, a young Floridian who had been visiting his family in the area.

“There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,” Mr. Huckabee said.

Responsibility for this killing doesn't really seem to be in doubt -- an NPR story on it was unambiguously headlined "Israeli Settlers Beat U.S. Citizen to Death in West Bank," and even Hakeem Jeffries condemned the killing. But now there's this from Huckabee:

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has threatened to publicly declare that Israel no longer welcomes Christian groups to Israel over what he said was Jerusalem’s failure to approve tourist visas for evangelical missions.

The threat was issued in a letter that Huckabee sent on Wednesday to Interior Minister Moshe Arbel, which was leaked to Hebrew media on Thursday....

Given Huckabee’s longstanding support for Israel and close ties with the current government in particular, the rhetoric in his letter represented a shockingly quick deterioration.

The letter is quite harsh:

“It would be very unfortunate that our embassy would have to publicly announce throughout the United States that the State of Israel is no longer welcoming Christian organizations and their representatives and is instead engaging in harassment and negative treatment toward organizations with long-standing relationships and positive involvement toward Zionism and friendship to the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” the US envoy wrote....

“If the government of Israel continues to cause the expense and bureaucratic harassment for the granting of routine visas that for decades have been routine, I will have no other choice than to instruct our consular section to review options for reciprocal treatment of Israeli citizens seeking visas to the United States,” Huckabee warned.

More:

"We would be further obligated to warn Christians in America that their generous contributions to organizations to promote goodwill in Israel are being met with hostility and that tourists should reconsider travel until this situation is resolved with clarity."

But Zohnran Mamdani is still evil, apparently.

Or perhaps the Overton window has moved a millimeter to the left. A couple of days ago, Axios reported that two purple-state Democrats have now criticized Israel (one of them very timidly):

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a moderate Democrat from a swing state, this week slammed the Israeli government for the lack of humanitarian aid in Gaza and violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

Slotkin wrote on X:

Another violent week in the Middle East: in Gaza, this weekend brought the death of another 60 Palestinians who were simply seeking food and water for their families. Israel has the responsibility to allow humanitarian aid in — just as the US had the responsibility to allow aid into places like Fallujah. And if President Trump’s hand-picked aid organization can’t get food and medicine to people in Gaza a safe way, Israel has the responsibility to find one that can.

In the West Bank, Israeli settlers beat a Palestinian-American U.S. citizen to death. This totals 5 Americans killed in the West Bank since October 7, 2023 and more than a dozen Palestinians killed by lawless settler violence. It’s hard to understand this lack of accountability by the Netanyahu government as anything other than tacit approval by the state — something that should be treated as abhorrent by all decent people.

This violence has to end. As I saw from my own experience in places like Iraq, democratic governments have responsibilities even when under threat. If President Trump and his team truly want a lasting ceasefire (not to mention a Nobel Peace Prize), they need to extract basic humanitarian and law and order standards now.

That's fairly strong, but this is weak tea:

"There are times when, to me, it doesn't look like [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] is prioritizing the hostage situation," Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told Axios. "Certainly, there's times when it looks like Hamas does not want a deal."

But maybe it's a start. Nevertheless, I'm sure we'll continue to hear that Zohran Mamdani is a dangerous Jew-hating terrorist who must be stopped by any means necessary.