NORTON META TAG

Showing posts with label Judaism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judaism. Show all posts

21 June 2026

The Unquiet American: Charles Kushner Brings Trump Diplomacy to France 20JUN26

 


CHARLES Kushner is a repulsive drippings*, self-centered, self-righteous, greedy, without any redeeming social qualities and and a raging holocaust hypocrite. It is no surprise NOT MY pres drumpf/trump appointed him as an ambassador since kushner's son married a spawn of drumpf/trump and they share the no class all trash characteristics of corrupt narcissistic families. Apologies to our French friends for sending kushner to you, please forgive us. ( *Drippings-the best part of him / her ran ( dripped ) down someone's leg )This from the New York Times.....


Ivanka & Jared: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) 23APR17


The Unquiet American: Charles Kushner Brings Trump Diplomacy to France


The U.S. envoy to Paris has emerged as the embodiment of combative diplomacy in the age of President Trump, riling the French establishment notably with his accusations of antisemitism.


Four days before marking the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, Charles Kushner, President Trump’s ambassador to France, made a quieter pilgrimage to a military cemetery in eastern France. There, he recited the Kaddish prayer over the graves of five Jewish American soldiers killed in World War I.

It was a solemn act of commemoration for Mr. Kushner, an Orthodox Jew who puts his faith at the heart of his diplomacy. But it is his full-throated advocacy on behalf of Jews living in today’s France that has drawn more attention, and reproach, in Paris, where he has cut a Trumpian swath through its decorous salons.

Mr. Kushner, whose son Jared is married to Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, clashed with his French hosts weeks after arriving last July when he accused them of not doing enough to combat antisemitism. Nearly a year later, he contends the problem has gotten worse — so much so that he has suggested the Trump administration grant refugee status to French Jews, even as it otherwise scales back asylum provision.

“It would be an objective of mine to have, for the Jewish population here, more options to go to America rather than the option of only going to Israel,” Mr. Kushner said in an interview last week in his baronial residence in Paris. “They live in fear and they feel abandoned by this government.”

Statements like that, which he first put in an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron last August, have burned his bridges with the French Foreign Ministry. Mr. Kushner, 72, has been summoned twice to be rebuked for interfering in France’s internal affairs — snubbing both requests — after which the foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, threatened to forbid him from meeting with French officials.

In February, he was called in after the U.S. Embassy reposted State Department comments that raised concerns about the beating death of a young far-right activist by far-left gangs. Mr. Barrot rejected what he called efforts to politicize a tragedy, saying, “We have no lessons to learn from the reactionary international movement.”

Such clashes, which once would have raised doubts about Mr. Kushner’s suitability for a diplomatic post, mark him as a fitting emissary for the age of Trump. He is not merely an in-law given a plum job but also a faithful messenger of Mr. Trump’s hostility toward Europe, whether that means pushing the fight against antisemitism or meeting with far-right political leaders. Mr. Kushner is among the best connected of a corps of ambassadors who have cast aside diplomatic niceties to channel a disdainful president.

“You know, America and France disagree on a lot of issues,” Mr. Kushner said in our interview. “This is not Charlie Kushner versus Barrot or Macron. America has a lot of issues in the world now that they have a very different opinion on than Europe and France, in particular.”

Mr. Kushner — joined in the interview by his wife, Seryl, and his influential chief of staff, Gabriel Scheinmann — was unrepentant about refusing to report to the French Foreign Ministry. Being summoned, he said, was “disrespectful to me personally” and “disrespectful to the United States government.”

A billionaire real estate developer from New Jersey, Mr. Kushner served more than a year in prison after he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and witness tampering, having hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with investigators against him, and then sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister. He was later pardoned by Mr. Trump.

Regarding his post in Paris, Mr. Kushner conceded that he did not have the “natural ingredients for diplomacy.” But he said, “We’re very results-oriented, so if that shakes things up sometimes, maybe we shake them up.”

Mr. Kushner and Mr. Barrot have since talked by phone, and Mr. Kushner’s access to French officialdom appears intact. He met for breakfast recently with Mr. Macron, accompanying Tom Barrack, who is Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Iraq. Mr. Kushner said he had a constructive relationship with the economics minister, Roland Lescure, for whom he organized a round table with executives from American technology companies.

Mr. Lescure said in an interview that he appreciated that Mr. Kushner did not impose the White House’s views at that session. But he said he shared his colleagues’ dismay at some of Mr. Kushner’s public statements.

“I don’t know any real estate guy who has become an ambassador,” Mr. Lescure said. “I’m not sure he’s fully learned to behave like one.”

Mr. Macron’s top advisers still steer clear of one-on-one meetings with Mr. Kushner, current and former French diplomats said, because they viewed his letter to the president as a personal attack on their boss. The French officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The tensions with Mr. Barrot, according to a senior American official, began after he did not warn Mr. Kushner at their first meeting in July 2025 that Mr. Macron planned to announce that evening that France would recognize the state of Palestine. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

A spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry said that there was no intention to conceal and that France’s movement toward recognition was well known. The ministry declined to comment more broadly on its relations with Mr. Kushner; Mr. Macron’s office did not answer requests for comment.


The Trump administration has voiced no misgivings about Mr. Kushner’s conduct. A spokesman for the State Department, Tommy Pigott, said, “From his leadership in commercial diplomacy to his strong advocacy against antisemitism, Ambassador Kushner is committed to advancing the ‘America First’ foreign policy vision.”

Few French officials dispute that Mr. Kushner has a point in warning about antisemitism in France. According to the French Interior Ministry, the number of violent acts against Jews rose sharply after Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023 and Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza, even if the rate dropped slightly last year.

Antisemitism is on the rise across Europe and in the United States. In France, which has large Jewish and Muslim populations, the debate is especially layered in history. In World War II, the Nazi-backed regime that controlled southern France helped to deport French Jews to concentration camps. More recently, France’s recognition of Palestine — which Mr. Kushner called “a gift to Hamas” — stirred questions about whether the move would fuel anti-Jewish feeling in the country.

Yet experts contend that Mr. Kushner is wrong to say that the French government is not doing anything to counter antisemitism. France, they say, possesses a stronger legal arsenal to combat antisemitism than almost any other country, and it has significantly reinforced security at Jewish institutions.

“The ambassador, who is right to take an interest in this issue and who hopes that France could improve its measures, should use more diplomatic language if he wants to be heard,” said Marc Knobel, a historian and expert on antisemitism in France. Mr. Kushner, he added, would be well advised “to also concern himself with the antisemitism taking place in his own country.”

Mr. Kushner granted that. “If you told me 10 years ago that we would have the antisemitism here today, I would have said, ‘You’re crazy.’” He said the difference was that Mr. Trump had taken robust action against it. The administration has sued institutions like Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania on the contested claim that they tolerated antisemitism on their campuses — while, Mr. Kushner noted, France had not taken comparable steps against French universities.

Mr. Kushner’s strong words have made him a hero among some Jews on both sides of the Atlantic. Before the ceremony at the military cemetery, American Jews lined up to thank him for his advocacy.

“He didn’t say it like the French would have liked, and it wasn’t very diplomatic,” said Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, a former director of the Europe branch of the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group. “But to have a U.S. ambassador who says he clearly cares about it, and this is a No. 1 priority — that is very reassuring,” she added.


As a child of Holocaust survivors, Mr. Kushner said that he deplored acts of hatred against any people of any religion. He said he had met with Catholic priests and Muslim clerics to discuss interfaith tensions. Hassen Chalghoumi, an imam in Paris known for his outreach to Jews, said that Mr. Kushner’s family ties to Mr. Trump gave his efforts greater impact.


“The ambassador is not just an ambassador,” Mr. Chalghoumi said. “He is directly linked to the president’s family.”


During Mr. Trump’s first term, Jared Kushner helped engineer the Abraham Accords, agreements under which several Arab countries normalized diplomatic relations with Israel. Unabashedly proud of his son’s achievement, the ambassador gives visitors signed copies of his son’s memoir, “Breaking History.” Mr. Kushner is cultivating Middle East ambassadors in Paris, he said, in the hope of persuading more countries to join the accords.

One of those envoys, Rabih El Chaer of Lebanon, said that Mr. Kushner had floated a meeting in the United States between Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, an old friend of Mr. Kushner’s. When Mr. El Chaer hesitated, he recalled Mr. Kushner telling him, “I am a man of deals.” Mr. El Chaer said he replied, “I come from the Middle East, where we don’t simply skip over history.”

For Mr. Kushner, too, history hangs over this assignment. Next month, he will celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence with a party at his residence, at which guests will be serenaded by the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. Mr. Kushner has renovated the building, an 18th-century villa that was once owned by the Rothschilds and requisitioned by the Nazis during their occupation of Paris.

To fund the repairs, Mr. Kushner said that he had raised $10 million, much of it from the chiefs of France’s largest companies, whom he asked to contribute $250,000. Other diplomats said that such high-dollar donations were unusual, at least before Mr. Trump became president. Mr. Kushner is, he joked, the project’s “site super.”


There is a measure of rehabilitation for Mr. Kushner himself.

“If somebody wrote my story,” he said of the twists that carried him from prison to Paris, “I’d probably be put in the fiction section of a store rather than nonfiction.”

Yet when asked whether he viewed his ambassadorial post as a chance to write a different ending, Mr. Kushner shook his head.

“This is not retribution for me,” he said.

Catherine Porter contributed reporting.

Mark Landler is the Paris bureau chief of The Times, covering France, as well as American foreign policy in Europe and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.

The Latest on the Trump Administration


  • Kennedy’s Special Education Role: Alienated by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims about autism, advocates for disabled students are sounding the alarm about the Trump administration's shifting of special education programs to his department.

  • New Air Force One: President Trump has unveiled the red, white and blue 747 Boeing jetliner donated by the government of Qatar, and he said he expected the plane to lead a flyover of Washington on July 4.

  • Ambassador to France: Charles Kushner has emerged as the embodiment of combative diplomacy in the age of Trump, riling the French establishment notably with his accusations of antisemitism.

  • Frayed Relationship with Giorgia Meloni: Trump said the Italian leader had “begged” him to take a photo together at the Group of 7 summit in France. Meloni called Trump’s statements “totally invented.”

  • Military Budget: Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are resisting Trump’s calls to raise the Pentagon’s budget to its highest level in modern history, signaling a looming fight over military spending as the administration refuses to detail the cost of the war with Iran.

  • National Intelligence Agency: With Bill Pulte, one of Trump’s aides who has most relentlessly pursued the president’s passions for retribution, likely to take over the agency, officials are bracing for the potential for even more efforts by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to influence the midterms. Some lawmakers want to shrink the office.

16 April 2026

Where the Menoreh Hills whisper peace: Tolerance in quiet grace APRIL 2026

 

PEACE is possible when the people, supported by their religious and political leaders, actually do their best to live the actual tenets of their faith. With all the violence in Sudan, the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea, Haiti, the Persian Gulf, Ukraine, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Lebanon and Israel, Afghanistan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo this from Vatican News is refreshing and hopeful and a perfect example of why Jesus declared "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God" (Matthew 5:9). Please God, continue to bless and keep the people of Patihombo Village, Purwosari, Girimulyo District, Indonesia and open our hearts and minds to learn lessons of peace from them.

Where the Menoreh Hills whisper peace: Tolerance in quiet grace

By Stanislaus Jumar Sudiyana

Dusk falls gently upon the folds of the Menoreh Hills, west of Yogyakarta. The air turns cool, carrying the scent of damp earth and leaves. At the Pelem Dukuh Administrative Parish Church, within the West Yogyakarta Vicariate, Kulon Progo Regency, Special Region of Yogyakarta, small candles are lit, simple lights flickering softly against the advancing dark.

In that stillness, some 713 Catholics enter the sacred rhythm of the Easter Triduum. Prayers flow unhurriedly, as though time itself pauses to listen.

Unspoken fraternity

Yet the evening holds a story that reaches beyond liturgy. Outside the pews, a quieter movement unfolds. Neighbours, village officials, and local youths, most of them Muslim, stand watch. Some guide vehicles along narrow village roads, others help secure the surroundings, while a few simply remain present, ensuring all proceeds well. There are no grand instructions, no expectation of recognition.

What emerges is sincerity, an unspoken fraternity among people. In this remote village, some 34 kilometres from Yogyakarta, tolerance does not raise its voice. It breathes. It endures.

Pelem Dukuh Parish forms part of the Archdiocese of Semarang, which by 2025 serves more than 362,000 Catholics across 109 parishes. Yet here, faith is not measured in numbers. It is revealed in conduct—in small, conscious acts carried out time and again.

In Patihombo Village, Purwosari, Girimulyo District, harmony is not newly built. It is inherited.

Village Head Sri Murtini, a Muslim, reflects on a tradition shaped across generations. Differences in belief are not lines of division, but threads that weave a shared life.

Tolerance is a collective memory

“We have lived this way for a long time. Even within one family, people may follow different religions, and it has never been an issue. It teaches us respect,” she said on Saturday (4 April 2026).

For her, tolerance is neither a programme nor a slogan. It is a collective memory—preserved, practised, and passed on. A quiet understanding that peace must be tended, like land that must never be left barren.

A similar spirit is echoed by community leader Suryadi. During Eid al-Fitr, he recalled, Catholic youths take part in safeguarding the prayers, ensuring their Muslim neighbours can worship in peace.

“We look after one another. Today we stand for them; tomorrow they stand for us. It is not merely duty—it is part of who we are,” he said.

In such reciprocity, difference loses its distance. What remains is trust. Thus, when Easter arrives, its meaning does not end at the altar. It extends outward, into action, into the simple willingness to be present for one another.


Muslim youths assist in organising vehicles for Catholic worshippers attending the Easter Mass, a quiet yet meaningful gesture of interfaith solidarity.

The essence of humanity

Fr. Martinus Suharyanto, who presided over the Easter Vigil Mass, sees in this togetherness something deeper than tolerance. He sees love in its most grounded form.

“What we witness here is more than coexistence. It is fraternity. When people of different faiths come to safeguard, to serve, and to ensure others may worship in peace, that is the essence of humanity,” he said in a message to Sonora.id.

He also expressed his gratitude to the police, the military, village officials, and residents who helped ensure the smooth observance of Holy Week.

“May all this goodness return as a blessing,” he added quietly.

At the western edge of the region, bordering Purworejo, life unfolds in rhythms both simple and profound. Interfaith encounters are not extraordinary—they are part of daily life.

Peace is not born of sameness

In the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Catholics make up around 4.3 per cent of the population, approximately 164,685 people. A minority in number, yet an essential part of Indonesia’s rich tapestry of diversity.

In a world often unsettled by difference, this small village offers a quiet lesson: peace is not born of sameness.

It grows from the willingness to care for differences.

It lives in the choice to stand for one another. And as night deepens over the Menoreh Hills, the candlelight remains—steady, faithful, unextinguished by the dark. In Pelem Dukuh, tolerance is not merely spoken. It is lived.


Fr. Martinus Suharyanto leads the Easter Mass, guiding the faithful in prayer amid an atmosphere of peace and unity.

18 April 2025

How Antisemitic Myths Twisted the Crucifixion of Jesus 14APR25

 

‘Ecce Homo’ (Behold the Man), by 19th-century painter Antonio Ciseri, depicts Pontius Pilate presenting Jesus to a crowd in Jerusalem. Tungsten/Galleria d'Arte Moderna via Wikimedia Commons.

This is an interesting look at the crucifixion of Christ and the origin of  anti-semitism. The Politics of Jesus by Jim Wallis is a good read for anyone who wants to go deeper into this. From Sojourners...

How Antisemitic Myths Twisted the Crucifixion of Jesus

It’s a straightforward part of the Easter story: The Roman governor Pontius Pilate had Jesus of Nazareth killed by his soldiers. He imposed a sentence that Roman judges often inflicted on social subversives — crucifixion.

The New Testament gospels say so. The Nicene Creed, one of Christianity’s key statements of faith, says Jesus “was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” The testimony of Paul, the first person whose preaching in the name of Jesus Christ is preserved in the New Testament, refers to the crucifixion.

But over the past 2,000 years, it was common for some Christians to deem Pilate almost blameless for Jesus’ death and treat Jews as responsible — a belief that has shaped the global history of antisemitism.

Throughout medieval times, Easter was often a dangerous time for Jewish communities, whom Christians targeted as “Christ-killers.” This perception was integral to the hate that motivated mass violence in Europe as late as the 19th and 20th centuries, including pogroms in Russia and even Nazi genocide.

Why did Christian teachings practically let Pilate off the hook? Why did many Christians allege Jews were to blame?

The gospels’ story

In the gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, Pilate believes Jesus innocent of any crime. In some of them, he even proclaims so in public.

But the chief priests of the ancient Jewish temple at Jerusalem see Jesus as a charismatic and popular Jewish preacher who challenges their authority. They have Jesus arrested and tried before Pilate during the week of Passover.

Pilate schemes for Jesus’ release, but a riotous crowd clamors for his death. Pilate caves and decides to crucify Jesus, whom Christians believe rose from the dead three days later.

Any reader of the gospels knows the sequence, though it varies somewhat in each of them. The earliest gospels, composed at least a generation after Jesus’ death, blamed the chief priests and attending crowd for persuading Pilate to have Jesus crucified. The gospel of John, written some decades after the other three, portrayed Jews in general as responsible, and so did much of early Christian literature.

One account, written in the mid-second century or later, and not included in the New Testament, even claimed that Jesus’ crucifixion was not ordered by Pilate. Instead, it blamed Herod Antipas, the Jewish ruler of Galilee — the region where Jesus grew up. Other texts from after the first few centuries A.D. said that Pilate became a Christian.

Roman history

Scholars have long debated the historical facts of Jesus’ trial. In my 2025 book, Killing the Messiah, I do too.

The gospel testimonies capture the basics of criminal trials before Roman judges, which were held in public. Judges posed questions to prosecutors and defendants, and had ample power to decide whether a person was innocent or guilty and impose a punishment.

Writers who lived in the Roman Empire portrayed judges as capricious, unaccountable or swayed by menacing crowds. The gospels reflect this attitude by making Pilate appear bullied into condemning an innocent man (Mark 15).

But from a historian’s viewpoint, there is a crucial problem with the gospels’ description. Roman judges could and sometimes did face removal from office, property confiscation, exile or even death for executing clearly innocent people. In other words, it seems unlikely that Pilate would have proclaimed Jesus guiltless, but then conceded to pressure and condemned him anyway.

Other ancient writers describe Pilate as someone who was not above offending the Jews of Judaea. According to the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo and the historian Josephus, Pilate had his soldiers carry objects that honored Roman emperors into Jerusalem, which Jewish residents saw as sacrilegious. When crowds protested, he sometimes backed down. But his soldiers attacked an agitated crowd that opposed Pilate’s use of Temple money to build an aqueduct. They also massacred an insurrection of Samaritans — people who also claimed descent from Israelites.

Pilate did not cave to hostile crowds indiscriminately, or do whatever the chief priests wanted. Since Roman prefects like him had to coordinate with Jewish priests to govern Jerusalem, he likely viewed people who incited social disturbance against them as subversive. Jesus would have fit in that category, but neither Philo nor Josephus provides examples of Pilate killing people after acquitting them.

Growing divide

Why, then, did Pilate have Jesus crucified? As many scholars have argued, the simple answer would be that he believed Jesus committed some sort of sedition — not that the crowd simply pressured Pilate into doing so.

Yet, when the gospels were composed a generation after the crucifixion, they portrayed Pilate as convinced of Jesus’ innocence. As more time passed, other works of ancient Christian literature shifted accountability from Pilate to Jews.

The experiences of Jesus’ early followers help explain this shift. They, like Jesus himself, were Jewish, and they considered him a heaven-sent Messiah. But over the course of the first and second centuries, they increasingly separated themselves from other Jews, until they began to see themselves as members of a non-Jewish movement: Christianity.

In Roman authorities’ eyes, the Christians were troublesome, and they sometimes faced prosecution and capital punishment. In addition, Rome had inflicted atrocities and punitive measures upon Jews after insurgencies — further motivating Jesus’ followers to distance themselves. Their literature became increasingly hostile toward Jews.

Historians and biblical scholars continue to debate why Pilate condemned Jesus. Was it for suggesting that he was the Messiah, or, in Pilate’s wording, “King of the Jews”? Did Jesus incite a crowd disturbance at the Temple during Passover — or were officials worried he could, even inadvertently? Were Jesus and his followers engaged in armed insurrection?

But regardless of the answer, as I argue in Killing the Messiah, responsibility for the crucifixion lies with Pilate — not the chief priests and the Jewish crowd at Jerusalem.The Conversation

Editor's note: This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nathanael Andrade is professor of history at Bringhamton University, State University of New York. He is the author of numerous books, including Killing the Messia