President-elect Donald Trump announced former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as his pick for the U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

In a statement, Trump called Huckabee a “great public servant” and pointed to his record of friendship with Israelis. 

“He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him,” Trump wrote. “Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”

Huckabee, a Southern Baptist pastor, has been a strong supporter of Israel, having been to the Jewish state more than 100 times, making his first visit over 50 years ago.

In a podcast episode for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Huckabee spoke of the importance of the fellowship of faith between Christians and Jews. 

“This is a biblical mandate, and we need to stand on it and recognize that we should never ever allow the Jewish people to feel that they’re alone again,” he said. 

Huckabee has been an even stronger defender of Israel following Hamas’s October 7 massacre, raping, and kidnapping of Israeli civilians.

“The worst level of evil that exists on our planet today we saw on October 7th,” Huckabee said in the podcast. “For anyone to march in the streets whether it’s America or Europe and to show support for this uncivilized and savage behavior to me is a mark of darkness in our world.”

Huckabee visited Kibbutz Kfar Aza — one of the hardest hit by terrorists — in December. At the site of the carnage, he declared “if we don’t stand with Israel, we stand for chaos,” reported the Times of Israel.

During the visit Huckbee pointed out he was used to seeing destroyed communities from the tornadoes in Arkansas but said seeing destruction done by human beings is a whole different story.

“As governor, I walked through scores of communities that had been hit by tornadoes, ripped apart and leveled to the ground,” he recalled, with artillery and machine gun fire sounds in the distance at the front lines. “And I was used to seeing that kind of destruction, but that’s because a weather system hit and hurt. What I’m seeing here happened because people who claimed to be human beings acted like something other than human beings and did evil.”

“I thought that we need, as Americans, to say with conviction to our Jewish friends in Israel: we stand with you,” he continued. “What you’ve been through is a level of savagery that no human being should experience. And [we need] to say boldly to the people in the US who are parading in the streets, completely misunderstanding what this is about, that there is no moral equivalency.”

Huckabee has been a strong supporter of Israel’s claim to Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, once arguing that Israel’s historical connection to the region, spanning thousands of years, is even stronger than America’s 400-year connection to Manhattan.

“If I came and said, we need to end our occupation of Manhattan, I’m pretty sure that most Americans would find that laughable,” he said. “The Israelis have a strong connection to Judea and Samaria.”

In a 2017 interview with CNN, Huckabee rejected the term “settlements” pointing out that the areas in dispute are communities, neighborhoods, and cities. He added that there is no such thing as “West Bank,” instead opting to use the historical term “Judea and Samaria.”