US Ambassador Mike Huckabee is no longer the only American envoy Israelis appreciate for his defense of the Jewish state. As of Monday, add America’s ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, to that list.
On Sunday, Kushner published a letter in The Wall Street Journal addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron in which he blasted what he described as France’s ineffectiveness in tackling the antisemitism running rampant on its streets. He linked Macron’s recent announcement that he intends to recognize a Palestinian state to an alarming uptick in antisemitic incidents across France.
“On the 81st anniversary of the Allied Liberation of Paris, which ended the deportation of Jews from French soil, I write out of deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it,” Kushner wrote, adding that both he and President Donald Trump have Jewish children and share Jewish grandchildren.
“Public statements haranguing Israel and gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France,” he wrote. “In today’s world, anti-Zionism is antisemitism – plain and simple.”
The French were not pleased. On Monday, in a rare public rebuke, the French Foreign Ministry summoned Kushner to protest his remarks.
A statement from the ministry said: “France firmly refutes these latest allegations,” calling the ambassador’s comments “unacceptable.” The ministry stressed that under the 1961 Vienna Convention, ambassadors are not permitted to interfere in a country’s internal affairs.
How cute. As if France’s ambassadors don’t regularly interfere in Israel’s internal affairs.
Consider this: In 2017, then-ambassador Hélène Le Gal strongly condemned a bill passed by the Knesset retroactively legalizing 4,000 homes built on privately owned Palestinian land in Area C. She declared the land was in the West Bank and therefore outside the Knesset’s purview.
Or this: In 2020, Ambassador Éric Danon said in an interview that “there are violations of international law of different degrees of severity, and an annexation of the Jordan Valley and settlements would be considered a serious one.” Is that not “interference” in Israel’s internal affairs?
And you don’t even have to go that far back. Just last week, Ambassador Frédéric Journès said Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza was fueling antisemitism by giving “real antisemites” an opening – an example of a serving ambassador openly attributing broader consequences to Israel’s internal military policy.
In that same interview, Journès warned Israel against closing the French Consulate in Jerusalem. That step was reportedly being considered as a response to Macron’s Palestinian state recognition initiative.
A pattern emerges: The golden rule – Don’t do to others what you would find hateful yourself – does not seem to apply to the French. Or, more precisely, they don’t believe it should apply to them.
Kushner, in his position for barely over a month, thinks differently. He had no qualms about taking France – so quick to judge Israel – to task for its own shortcomings.
It didn’t take him long to make his mark, aggravating the French enough that they summoned him, employing a diplomatic tool of displeasure Paris had not used against a US envoy since 2015, when ambassador Jane Hartley was called in over an NSA spying scandal.
In 2021, France went even further, recalling its ambassador from Washington for consultations for five days after the AUKUS defense pact scuttled a multibillion-dollar French submarine deal in favor of a US-British-Australian arrangement.
Apparently, the French don’t mind when their ox is doing the goring, but they can’t take it when their own ox is the one being gored.
Tellingly, Kushner’s letter echoed much of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote to Macron just a week earlier. Netanyahu has been friendly with Kushner, Jared’s father, for years, and according to a 2017 New York Times report, even displaced Jared from his bedroom to the basement when he stayed a night at the Kushners’ home in New Jersey many years ago.
Netanyahu wrote to Macron, expressing his “concern with the alarming rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of decisive action by your government to confront it.”
Like Kushner, Netanyahu also wrote that the call for a Palestinian state “pours fuel on the antisemitic fire” and “emboldens those who menace French Jews and encourages the Jew-hatred now stalking your streets.”
Both Netanyahu and Kushner contrasted Macron’s position with the steps Trump has taken to combat antisemitism in America.
French govt. denies claim that Palestinian recognition causes increased antisemitsm
The Élysée Palace responded sharply, saying the “claim that France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state as early as September is the cause of the rise in antisemitic violence in France is incorrect, outrageous, and will not go unanswered.”
Unanswered, here, is a keyword.
The French reserve the right to answer everyone, but when their own actions provoke a reaction – when their own actions trigger an “answer” – they react with outsized indignation.
The Kushner incident is not a standalone diplomatic flare-up; it is one more irritant in an already strained US-France relationship. Trade disputes, Macron’s push for European strategic autonomy, disagreements over climate policy, UN peacekeeping in Lebanon, and differing approaches toward Ukraine have all strained ties that remain strong at their core but increasingly testy in practice.
This episode will not derail relations anchored in shared history and interests. But it does show how thin-skinned Paris can be when the same scrutiny it so freely directs abroad is turned back on itself. The French response to Kushner’s criticism illustrates that the most effective rebuke may be to reflect a country’s own language of moral critique back at it.
There was something refreshing in Kushner’s candor, and – for Israel – something reassuring in knowing it has an ally in Paris willing to link anti-Israel gestures with the antisemitism playing out on French streets.
That makes Kushner not just another American envoy abroad, but an unexpected voice in Paris willing to say what Jerusalem has long believed.