France has summoned U.S. ambassador Charles Kushner because Jared Kushner’s father wrote a letter that dared to say out loud what every French Jew already knows: Emmanuel Macron has failed to fight antisemitism. The French government responded with arrogance, as if the real crime was telling the truth. This is France in 2025—a nation drowning in antisemitism, paralyzed by Islamist extremism, pretending it still speaks with moral authority.
Antisemitism is Europe’s oldest disease, and France has carried it like a hereditary curse. The Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century exposed the rot at the heart of the French Republic. Vichy’s collaboration with the Nazis deported 75,000 Jews to their deaths. France has never cleansed this stain—only buried it beneath speeches and ceremonies. And in our century, the disease has erupted again.
The torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, kidnapped and brutalized for three weeks by a gang who said, “Jews have money.” The slaughter of a Jewish school in Toulouse, where terrorist Mohammed Merah grabbed eight-year-old Myriam Monsonego by the hair and shot her point-blank in the head after murdering three other children and a rabbi. The massacre at the Hypercacher kosher supermarket, where Jews were gunned down while shopping before Shabbat. The brutal beating and defenestration of Sarah Halimi. Endless harassment of Jews in the banlieues. From Dreyfus to Vichy to Macron, the pattern is the same: France betrays, Jews bleed, politicians deliver speeches. France is not failing to fight antisemitism—it has surrendered to it.
The warning signs could not have been louder. In 2015, Islamist gunmen stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo, murdering journalists for drawing cartoons. Just days later, Jews were butchered in the Hypercacher kosher supermarket. That same year, terrorists turned the Bataclan concert hall into a bloodbath. In Nice, a terrorist drove a truck into families celebrating Bastille Day. In Strasbourg, gunmen opened fire at a Christmas market. This is not a single tragedy. It is a pattern of collapse. And yet, the French elite pretends Paris is still Paris. They pretend the Republic stands tall. But anyone walking the streets knows otherwise.
Paris no longer feels like the City of Light. Soldiers stand guard outside synagogues. Kosher stores operate behind security checkpoints. Whole neighborhoods have become foreign territory. Jews hide their kippot. Families sell their apartments and move to Netanya and Ashdod. Paris has become unrecognizable. Macron knows this. Every French Jew knows this. The only people who pretend not to are the politicians desperate to protect their illusions.
Macron loves speeches about “Republican values.” He loves ceremonies. He loves photo ops at Holocaust memorials. But in real life, his Republic is collapsing. He lectures Israel about morality while Jews in Paris are stabbed and beaten. He warns against “Islamophobia” while synagogues are vandalized. He stages elaborate commemorations while the Jewish population of France shrinks every year. The French elite still imagines itself as the guardian of the Enlightenment. In truth, they preside over darkness.
That is why the Kushner letter matters. Because it did not come from a diplomat or a think-tank bureaucrat, it came from a man whose family is bound by blood and faith to the Jewish future. His son Jared Kushner married Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism. Donald Trump—the President of the United States—has Jewish grandchildren. Do people understand what that means? The most powerful man on earth looked at antisemitism not as an abstraction but as a threat to the future of his family.
That reality drove him to back Jared as he reshaped the Middle East with the Abraham Accords, bringing Jews and Arabs to peace when everyone said it was impossible. Do you know what it takes to write that letter? Conviction. This is a man who went to prison, was pardoned and still stands tall. A man whose son sat in the White House and, with Trump’s permission and blessing, helped Netanyahu and others reorder the Middle East. A man whose family name has been dragged through the mud and yet still dares to stand for Israel and the Jewish people. That is a strength. That is defiance. That is a moral rebellion against the polite lies Europe tells itself while its Jews are hunted again.
And what does Macron do? He summons the U.S. ambassador. This is not the act of a strong leader. It is the act of a pretender. Because while French Jews are being slaughtered, while terror rips through French streets, while Paris itself becomes unrecognizable, Macron’s grand gesture of courage is summoning an American envoy for a scolding. What a display of cowardice and betrayal of the Republic of liberty, equality and fraternity.
France summoned the American ambassador. But who summons France? Who summons Macron for Ilan Halimi, for Toulouse, for Hypercacher, for Charlie Hebdo, for Sarah Halimi, for Bataclan, for Nice? Who summons France for every Jew driven from their home, for every synagogue desecrated, for every child who hides their identity on French streets? Summoning an ambassador is theater. Summoning courage is reality. France has chosen theater.
Jared Kushner’s father has the freedom to say what French Jews whisper in fear. He has the courage to say it out loud: Macron, your country is failing its Jews. Macron, your country is rotting from within. Macron, Paris is no longer Paris. And that is why France is outraged. Not because the letter was false—but because it was true. France cannot stand to look at itself in the mirror. It matters who speaks. Jared Kushner helped bring Arabs and Israelis together in a peace no one thought possible. He proved that courage and clarity could change the map of the Middle East. That courage was inherited. His father, after prison, after disgrace, still stands up and says: My family will not bend, my people will not be silenced, my history will not be erased.
When Judah Maccabee rose against the Seleucid empire, it was not because the Jews were loved, but because they chose to live. When Moses stood before Pharaoh, it was not to ask politely for survival, but to demand liberation: “Let My people go.” When Isaiah declared, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,” he spoke to this moment too. That same defiance flows today—one Jewish leader standing against the empire of lies and cowardice.
France may summon an ambassador, but history summons France. Summons it to answer for Dreyfus, for Vichy, for Charlie Hebdo, for Hypercacher, for Bataclan, for Nice, for Sarah Halimi, for every Jew slaughtered. At the same time, politicians delivered speeches and staged ceremonies. Macron can posture. He can summon. He can lecture. But he cannot escape the truth. And the truth is this: Jared Kushner’s father did what Macron will not. He told France the ugly truth about itself. France is failing its Jews. Again. And if one man with everything to lose can speak that truth, then what excuse does anyone else have for silence?
- Adam Scott Bellos is the founder of The Israel Innovation Fund (TIIF) and the author of Never Again Is Not Enough: Why Hebraization Is the Only Way to Save the Diaspora.