TEHRAN — Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel and a passionate advocate of its wars in the region, has told the people of Lebanon to be grateful for Israeli contributions to their society.
Video of Huckabee speaking at the Atlas Awards in Tel Aviv on May 12 is being shared online after it was picked up by Chris Menahan of the news site Information Liberation.
In the speech, Huckabee extolls the various purported Israeli contributions to society, including USB drives, cherry tomatoes and seedless watermelons.
“I wonder if everyone in Lebanon understands that if there were no Israel, they wouldn’t have a cell phone,” Huckabee said, according to Middle East Eye.
These comments paint Huckabee as profoundly unfit for a diplomatic post.
The most glaringly bizarre aspect of the speech is the comparison of human life to consumer goods.
In the middle of this immense human suffering in Lebanon at the hands of the Israeli occupation army, the U.S. diplomat suggests the appropriate emotional response for the Lebanese people should be gratitude for agricultural and tech innovations.
Telling people whose homes are being leveled to essentially say, “Well, my neighborhood is destroyed, but at least this seedless watermelon is delicious, thank you, Israel,” moves past standard political spin into the realm of the surreal. It reads more like dark satire than the words of an official representative of the United States.
In the context of international relations, this is a form of diplomatic malpractice. Lebanon and Israel are in an active, bloody conflict. The southern border is a heavily fortified, mined, and actively bombarded war zone. Civilians attempting to return to their homes in the south are being targeted.
For a U.S. ambassador to publicly advise civilians in a hostile country to physically cross an active battle line to say thank you is not just odd—it is wildly irresponsible advice that, if actually followed, would result in immediate civilian casualties.
Diplomacy relies on nuance, historical awareness, and an understanding of deep-seated regional grievances. Huckabee reduced a multi-decade, highly complex geopolitical conflict down to a list of corporate patents and tech features.
By implying that Lebanon “wouldn’t have a cell phone” without Israel, he ignores how globalized supply chains and technology work, while simultaneously using a patronizing “we civilized you” tone. This type of rhetoric serves no strategic purpose; it only deeply insults the population of a sovereign country.
By combining this “watermelon speech” with his previous statements that Israel should “take it all” (expanding borders from the Nile to the Euphrates), Huckabee completely destroys any pretense of U.S. neutrality or fairness. He sounds less like an ambassador representing the broader strategic interests of the United States and more like an absolute ideologue who views a complex war purely through a black-and-white, theological lens.
Statecraft requires tact, empathy, and a razor-sharp grip on reality. Suggesting that seedless watermelons and cherry tomatoes should outweigh the trauma of an active bombing campaign makes Huckabee look entirely out of touch with the gravity of his office.
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