Huckabee Tells WHO: ‘How About We Put Pressure Where it Really Belongs, on Hamas’

Wednesday, 23 April 2025 | Mike Huckabee, the newly installed US ambassador to Israel, shared a public response to Dr. Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the eastern Mediterranean at the World Health Organization [WHO], who called on him to allow more aid into Gaza.

Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, said he appreciated Balkhy’s request but suggested that “we work together on putting the pressure where it really belongs—on Hamas.”

The terror group should sign an agreement to allow aid into Gaza without looting it and must release the hostages, and then “aid can flow into Gaza to the people who desperately need it,” the US envoy said.

“Aid that goes to Hamas is not humanitarian,” wrote Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in response to Huckabee.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Washington, DC, and the Republican Jewish Coalition thanked Huckabee.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) wrote that Huckabee was correct. “Hamas has spent the last 563 days holding innocent Americans and Israelis hostage in Gaza,” Scott stated. “The pressure belongs on Hamas terrorists to release every last hostage today.”

“Israel can’t quit the World Health Organization quick enough,” wrote Eugene Kontorovich, professor at the George Mason University Scalia Law School. “After helping Hamas hide in hospitals, WHO has chutzpah [extreme self-confidence or audacity] to ask a US ambassador, whose country is already quitting the corrupt organization, to pressure Israel.”

Last week, Hamas rejected Israel’s latest ceasefire and hostage release proposal.