(Photo credit: Reuters/Ammar Awad)The Cradle
OCT 17, 2026
The trips promise US citizens an audience with senior Israeli officials and lectures from extremist pro-Israel figures
A Zeteo investigation published on 17 October has revealed that the family of US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is selling paid tours to Israel for US citizens that offer access to senior Israeli officials.
According to the company’s advertising and filings, the travel business, now run by Huckabee’s son and formerly marketed as “The Israel Experience with Governor Mike Huckabee,” has taken hundreds of travelers to Israel over the years and continues to bring US citizens to hear Israeli officials speak.
In 2015, the Washington Post reported that the trips cost $5,250 a head, covering five-star hotels, flights out of New York, and meals.
Guests were granted meetings with top Israeli leaders and evening lectures by extremist pro-Israel figures, while Palestinians and their towns were entirely omitted from the itinerary.
Huckabee has repeatedly denied Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, its occupation of Palestine, and its apartheid regime, touting that there is “no such thing as a Palestinian.”
On 8 October, the New York Times revealed that Huckabee’s senior aide, David Milstein, repeatedly buried or altered diplomatic reports to Washington that documented Israeli crimes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to either downplay the atrocities or erase them outright.
Among the suppressed reports was a March review of the killings of nine Palestinian US citizens by Israeli settlers and soldiers, which found that no one had been charged.
Milstein also turned staff warnings about mass casualties at the US-Israeli-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—where at least 1,400 Palestinian aid seekers were killed—into a story portraying the operation as a success.
He also blocked reports that relayed warnings from Israeli commanders saying that settler attacks could ignite a new uprising, and sent a cable under his own name crediting Netanyahu with reining in the violence instead.
Officials said he subjected colleagues to loyalty tests, demanding to know whether they were “pro-Israel” or “pro-Hamas” and leaving staff afraid to speak out.
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