The U.S. government defended Charles Kushner, the U.S. ambassador to France, whose son is married to the daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump, after Kushner penned an Aug. 24 Wall Street Journal op-ed denouncing Jew-hatred in the country.
“We stand by his comments,” Tommy Pigott, principal deputy U.S. State Department spokesman, told JNS of the envoy’s piece, published as an open letter to French President Emmanuel Macron.
The ambassador is “our U.S. government representative in France and is doing a great job advancing our national interests in that role,” Pinot told JNS.
On Tuesday, Kushner stated that his team met on Monday with French foreign ministry officials “regarding my letter to President Macron, and more importantly, to discuss how we can and will work together to combat antisemitism and all forms of hatred.” (JNS sought comment from the U.S. embassy in Paris.)
In the blunt article, he wrote that he had “deep concern” about the “dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it. The French government called the op-ed “unacceptable” and said that it had summoned the Jewish envoy to discuss the article.
Jewish groups told JNS that they agree with Kushner’s letter.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS that he is “absolutely grateful” for Kushner’s op-ed.
“The Jewish community in France continues to be between a rock and a hard place, and there’s no wiggle room—not politically and not even safety-wise,” Cooper told JNS.
The French judicial system “has basically not taken antisemitism seriously in France” and has “let murderers walk,” according to Cooper. Macron, who has said Paris will recognize a Palestinian state, considers himself a global leader, but “you don’t lead by rewarding terrorism,” Cooper said.
“Maybe that’s how you lead in France, but you don’t lead on the global stage—not in this era—by catering and caving to the Hamasniks,” he said.
Cooper intends to call Kushner to thank him.
The American Jewish Committee stated that Kushner’s letter “underscores the urgent need for decisive action to protect Jewish communities” and that “France and the United States must not just cooperate but lead in the battle against rising antisemitism.”
The AJC added that Jew-hatred had “surged” across Europe this summer and that 646 incidents of Jew-hatred were recorded in France from January to June, 2025, “including assaults on rabbis, synagogue vandalism, threats of violence and attacks on Jewish children.”
Kushner’s efforts to fight Jew-hatred “exemplify the clarity and resolve this moment demands,” the nonprofit said.
‘Spreading like a tsunami’
Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, told JNS that Jew-hatred is rising undeniably in Europe.
“It has reached the level of a crisis, all the more so with the new legitimacy given to Hamas and its Jew-hatred by the French government,” he said.
Filitti accused Paris of attacking the messenger after Kushner denounced antisemitism in the country. “Hauling in the U.S. ambassador for speaking hard truths does nothing to make France safer,” he said. “It only underscores the gap between lofty rhetoric and meaningful action.”
Arié Bensemhoun, CEO of the European Leadership Network-France, told JNS that Hamas’s lies, which “our diplomacy and certain media” have shared, “recall the accusations of ritual crimes against Jews in the Middle Ages.”
“Yesterday, it was the poisoning of wells and the spread of the plague. Today, it’s the massacre of civilians and particularly children, a supposed ongoing genocide, a famine that doesn’t exist but is denounced by the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations in the pay of Hamas,” said Bensemhoun, who is also a dentist.
Such blood libels are “the fuel for the propaganda of pro-Palestinians against Israel in the world,” he told JNS. As such, Macron’s decision “to recognize a Palestinian state that doesn’t exist contributes to fueling hatred and violence against Jews, which is spreading like a tsunami,” he said.
“France cannot encourage those who dream of erasing Israel from the map, massacring Jews worldwide and dragging our societies into an infernal spiral of hatred and violence,” Bensemhoun said.
The Republican Jewish Coalition also praised Kushner, noting his “moral clarity.”
A former diplomat with deep knowledge of the French-Israeli relationship told JNS that Paris could do “much more” to combat Jew-hatred. But the former envoy said that Kushner’s letter was “too simple.”
It would have been “more correct” to have correspondence between presidents than an envoy addressing a public letter to a president, according to the former diplomat.
“Macron says many things to heads of state all over the world, saying, ‘You should do that, you should do that,’” but French ambassadors haven’t told other heads of state what to do, or not do, per the former diplomat.
“It’s just not acceptable in Europe,” the former diplomat told JNS. “But that’s the way this administration thinks it can talk to others.”
The former diplomat added that when the French government summoned Kushner, it likely told him, “Who are you to say that to the president of France?!”
