U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called out former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for an "outright lie" in a false claim the ambassador was threatening a boycott of Israel over the blocking of visas to Christian groups – an issue long since resolved.
"This is an outright lie! @mattgaetz knows how to reach me & could have asked," Huckabee wrote Thursday morning on X, sharing an OAN report by Gaetz.
"I DO NOT call for a boycott. I instead urge all people to come to Israel and get facts for themselves. And Matt ought to do just that!"
Gaetz's televised report was using The Times of Israel making the claim from letters sent in July, where Huckabee expressed concern about Israel's slow granting of visas to Christian groups.
The uproar stems from a July letter by Huckabee to Israel's former Interior Minister Moshe Arbel in which he accused the Interior Ministry of obstructing visa approvals for evangelical Christian groups and threatened that his embassy might publicly declare Israel hostile to Christian missions if the matter was not resolved.
But Arbel resigned soon after Huckabee's letter.
Following the leak of the letter and its inflammatory tone, Israel and the U.S. announced a resolution to the visa dispute.
Huckabee said Israel would "completely restore the long-standing process" for Christian missionary visas.
The visa row involved delays and more stringent questioning of Christian organizations that traditionally had been granted visas under routine procedures.
Huckabee maintains that no boycott was ever proposed, and he continues to call for direct engagement and travel to Israel in order to see conditions firsthand.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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