By summoning U.S. Ambassador Charles Kushner for daring to speak out on France’s failure to protect its Jewish citizens, Paris has shown exactly why his words were necessary. Instead of self-reflection, France chose denial. Instead of urgency, it chose diplomatic theater. And instead of confronting the oldest hatred on European soil, it chose to rebuke a son of Holocaust survivors who knows what happens when antisemitism festers unchecked.
Mr. Kushner’s letter to President Emmanuel Macron was not a provocation. It was a plea — a plea echoing what French Jews themselves have been saying for years: that antisemitism is not just rising in France, it is metastasizing. The cutting down of the tree planted for Ilan Halimi, the defacement of synagogues, the daily assaults on Jews walking down French streets — these are not abstract trends. They are lived realities.
Yet the French Foreign Ministry’s response was to “firmly refute” Kushner’s concerns, citing the Vienna Convention and “non-interference in internal affairs.” But antisemitism is not an “internal affair.” It is a global moral test. And history teaches us what happens when the world shrugs. The Holocaust was preceded not by silence in Berlin, but by silence in Paris, London, and Washington.
Ambassador Kushner was right to connect France’s recognition of a Palestinian state with the safety of Jews in France. To reward Hamas — the group still holding Israeli hostages and openly vowing to repeat October 7 — with premature recognition is not diplomacy, it is appeasement. And appeasement has always emboldened extremists.
President Macron insists France is “uncompromising” in the face of antisemitism. But compromise is exactly what recognition of Palestinian statehood represents: a concession to terror, made at the expense of Israel’s security and French Jewry’s safety. The French government may point to police outside synagogues, but Jews do not want to live behind barricades. They want to live freely as full French citizens, without fear.
The stakes extend beyond the Jewish community. Antisemitism is the canary in the coal mine of democracy. A France unwilling to confront it honestly will soon find that the poison corrodes its Republic itself.
The U.S. ambassador did not interfere in French affairs. He reminded France of its own promise: Never again. If France chooses to silence that reminder rather than act upon it, then history’s judgment will be severe.
Israel has long said that the security of Jews worldwide is inseparable from the security of the Jewish state. The events in France prove this once more. A strong Israel is not only a refuge for Jews in distress — it is also the moral compass that holds the free world accountable when it begins to lose its way.
France should stop lashing out at truth-tellers and start listening to its Jewish citizens. Because if Jews once again feel that Europe is unsafe, it will not only be a tragedy for them — it will be a tragedy for France.