The United States ambassador to Paris snubbed a summons to the French foreign ministry, according to reports, amid a deepening diplomatic rift over antisemitism.
Charles Kushner, the father of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, was expected to receive a dressing down in a meeting with the foreign ministry for claiming that President Macron’s government was failing in the fight against antisemitism.
He did not appear for Monday’s meeting, however, and sent his number two instead, a French diplomatic official told the Associated Press.
Last week, Kushner wrote a letter to Macron that was subsequently made public. In it, he expressed “deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it”.
“In France, not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street, synagogues or schools defaced, or Jewish-owned businesses vandalised,” he said.
The foreign ministry retorted in a statement: “The ambassador’s allegations are unacceptable.”
On Monday, the diplomatic official said the letter “was unacceptable in both form and substance” and constituted interference in the country’s internal affairs.
Charles Kushner and his son Jared
PATRICK MCMULLAN VIA GETTY IMAGES
French commentators said Kushner’s comments echoed a letter sent to Macron by Binyamin Netanyahu this month, claiming that France’s plans to recognise a Palestinian state was fuelling antisemitism. The French government said the Israeli prime minister’s arguments were “abject” and “mistaken”.
A total of 646 antisemitic acts were recorded in France in the first half of this year, according to the interior ministry. This represents a 28 per cent fall compared with the same period last year but a 113 per cent increase on the total for the first six months of 2023.
France has the world’s third largest Jewish community after Israel and the US, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.
Kushner, a real-estate developer, was born to Jewish Holocaust survivors who came to America from the USSR. His son, who is married to Ivanka Trump, is largely credited with spearheading the Abraham Accords during Trump’s first term in office, which normalised relations between Israel and four Arab nations.
Neither the embassy nor the state department had an immediate response to the report that Kushner did not attend Monday’s meeting.
The US state department said on Sunday that it stood by Kushner’s criticisms and that the ambassador was “doing a great job advancing our national interests in that role”.