Anti-Israel demonstrators disrupted a Hanukkah candle lighting event in Little Rock, Arkansas on Wednesday night.
The event, which was hosted by Chabad Lubavitch of Arkansas, was attended by former Arkansas governor and president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
The protesters were representing two activist groups, Little Rock Peace for Palestine and an anti-Zionist Jewish organization called Taste of Olam Haba.
In social media posts, the two groups claimed they were protesting Huckabee’s “Christian Zionism,” which they described as “antisemitism.”
The groups wrote that “only loving Jews that support your right-wing end-times theology is not loving Jews. It is weaponizing Jews who you will easily discard when they do not fall in line.”
The groups said they were protesting Huckabee’s “message of division,” saying he should be calling for “unity, justice, and equality for all people between the river and the sea.”
Chabad called the event “light in the face of darkness,” and said the event’s attendees had succeeded in “drowning out antisemitic protesters” by singing traditional songs to celebrate the Hanukkah holiday.
Huckabee is an evangelical Christian, and a hardline supporter of Israel’s settlement enterprise.
He has called Israel’s claim to the West Bank stronger than American ties to Manhattan and laid bricks in 2018 as ground was broken on a new housing complex in the settlement of Efrat.
During a 2017 visit to the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, Huckabee told reporters: “There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank — It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement — They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio in November after his nomination to serve as Trump’s ambassador to Israel, Huckabee said annexation of the West Bank would “of course” become a possibility after Trump takes office in January.
Huckabee is the first non-Jew nominated for the post since James Cunningham was tapped by then-US president George W. Bush in 2008. If confirmed, he will replace Jack Lew, who has served as Biden’s ambassador to Israel since November 2023.