Email from Zionist Organization of America   ZIONIST ORGANIZATION OF AMERICA NEWS RELEASE ZOA Urges U.S. Senate to Confirm Gov. Huckabee As U.S. Ambassador to Israel & Dismiss Reform Jewish Movement's Nonsensical Attack     Senator James E. Risch Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee 483 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Senator Jeanne Shaheen Ranking Member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee 506 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Members of the Senate Dear Senator: I am writing to you on behalf of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States, and our supporters throughout the U.S., to strongly and whole-heartedly support the confirmation of ZOA’s Friend of Zion 2019 awardee, Governor Mike Huckabee, to become Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the State of Israel. Governor Huckabee is a great American patriot and friend of the Jewish people, and a man of sterling character and compassion, with widely-praised executive abilities. Gov. Huckabee has an extraordinary understanding of Israel’s history, legal rights to her land and on-the-ground realities. As the U.S. State Department’s Certificate of Competency[1] notes, Gov. Huckabee’s multiple visits to Israel over the past fifty years have given him a deep familiarity with Israel’s leaders and people. It is difficult to fathom how anyone who calls himself a Jewish Zionist could oppose Gov. Huckabee’s confirmation. We were thus appalled by Reform Religious Action Center director Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner’s February 21 letter criticizing Gov. Huckabee. ZOA’s supporters include members of every Jewish stream – including Reform Judaism. I can assure you that many Reform Jews strongly disagree with R. Pesner’s views, notwithstanding Pesner’s effort to portray himself as representing the entirety of Reform Jewry. Pesner’s letter relies on several delusions, and asks the Senate reject any official that does not share Pesner’s dangerous delusions and historically false views. Pesner’s first delusion is that Israel is an “occupier” of historic Jewish lands guaranteed to the Jewish people under binding international law - including the San Remo Resolution; the Mandate (under which Britain held the area including Judea-Samaria and Gaza in trust for the Jewish people); the Anglo-American Convention; and the UN Charter - which preserved intact the Jewish people’s rights to the land granted to the Jewish people under the Mandate, even after the Mandate’s expiration.[2] Pesner’s second delusion is that creating a Palestinian state – on the same land designated for the Jewish people under international law – is synonymous with peace and American interests. In fact, creating such a Palestinian state would be a disaster for Israel and America, and would endanger both nations and their people. In July 2024, Israel’s democratically-elected Knesset overwhelmingly rejected creating a Palestinian state, declaring: “The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel would pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region. “It will only be a matter of a short time until Hamas takes over the Palestinian state and turns it into a radical Islamic terror base that operates in coordination with the Iranian-led axis to eliminate the State of Israel. Promoting the idea of a Palestinian state at this time would be a reward for terrorism and would only encourage Hamas and its supporters, who will view this as a victory thanks to the massacre of October 7, 2023, and a prelude to the takeover of jihadist Islam in the Middle East.”[3] On February 20, 2025, the CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Mark Dubowitz, posted: “I deeply regret my decades of support for a Palestinian state under ‘land for peace’ and the ‘two-state solution.’ I was wrong—badly wrong. I misjudged a society that prioritizes murdering Jewish children over building a better future for its own. I apologize.”[4] A Palestinian Arab state would be an Iranian-proxy terror state. Iran is already flooding massive weaponry into the Palestinian Authority[5]; this flood would turn into a tsunami if there was a sovereign Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority continues to incite and pay Arab terrorists to murder Jews (including numerous American Jews), despite rebranding its pay-to-slay payments as “economic empowerment” payments.[6] Fatah (the governing party of the Palestinian Authority) as well as thousands of Gazan civilians committed atrocities on October 7. Approximately 40 Americans were murdered and a dozen Americans taken hostage on October 7; five Americans are still being held in Gaza. A Palestinian state would mean more October 7ths, carried out by an entity with all the powers of a sovereign state. Pesner’s third delusion is that there is a historic Palestinian Arab people. In fact, there has never been a Palestinian state, king, queen or distinct people. Palestinian Arabs moved into the area from Egypt, Syria, Algeria, etc. and are indistinguishable from other Arabs in the area. A nominee for ambassador who understands all these realities is in fact good for American interests. It is also mortifying that Pesner’s letter maligned the tens of millions of evangelicals and Christian Zionists in the United States. Pesner portrays evangelical views as “untested by reasoned discourse” and as opposed to America’s “moral values,” and asks the Senate to examine Governor Huckabee’s religious faith. Pesner’s letter would establish a dangerous religious test for public office. In fact, Christian Zionism has reflected America’s interests since our earliest days. In 1819, America’s second President, John Adams, wrote to his friend Mordecai Noah, I “wish that you had been at the head of a hundred thousand Israelites indeed as well disciplin’d as a French army—& marching with them into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the dominion of it—For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.”[7] President Woodrow Wilson, who endorsed the 1917 Balfour declaration, considered it “a privilege to restore the Holy Land to its rightful owners.”[8] The core Christian Zionist belief – that G-d will bless those who bless the Jewish people, and curse those who curse the Jewish people (Genesis 12:3) – has held true throughout history. Evangelical or Christian Zionist beliefs should certainly not constitute grounds for disqualifying any candidate for public office. Sincerely, Morton A. 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