ALBAWABA - A meeting between U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard has made a lot of conservatives in the U.S. angry, especially those who support former President Donald Trump.
The New York Times said that Huckabee met with Pollard in private last July at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, which sparked the controversy. The ambassador, who is known for being very pro-Israel, did not put the meeting on his official schedule.
Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, spent 30 years in prison for giving Israel highly classified American documents. This is one of the worst cases of espionage in U.S. history. He got out of prison on parole in 2015 and moved to Israel in 2020. Some people on the Israeli right see him as a hero.
Pollard told the newspaper that the meeting was "friendly," but Huckabee told Axios that "nothing was asked and nothing was given" during the meeting.
But the reaction from the MAGA movement was very angry. Some people said Huckabee cared more about Israel than about the safety of the United States. Conservative activist Mike Cernovich called the meeting "indefensible," pointing out that Pollard has said that spying on the U.S. was a "moral duty" since moving to Israel.
Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor, said on his "War Room" podcast that Huckabee was "completely out of control." "You can't meet with traitors," said right-wing commentator and former naval intelligence officer Jack Posobiec.
The event brought back up long-running arguments about "dual loyalty," which is the idea that some American Jews put loyalty to Israel above loyalty to the United States. This is a topic that comes up a lot in far-right circles.
The White House said it didn't know about the meeting until it was over. Still, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made it clear on Thursday that "President Trump supports Ambassador Mike Huckabee and everything he is doing for the United States and Israel."
The fallout shows that tensions are rising within Trump's political base, where loyalty tests and foreign policy disagreements are still causing big fights.
