NORTON META TAG

Showing posts with label holocaust hypocrisy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holocaust hypocrisy. 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.

26 May 2026

ARTICLES & VIDEO: In West Bank, Latest Victim of Israeli Settler Violence Shocks in a New Way & Israel’s President Excoriates Growing Israeli Violence and Brutality 22MAI26


A dog being beaten by a settler in the West Bank village of Atara in May.Credit...Abu Rejalah family

THE decline in the humanity and morality of Israeli Jews, secular and "religious" is a sad statement on the condition of Israel. Participation in and the encouragement, toleration and defense of  Israelis attacking Palestinians in Israel proper and East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, extrajudicial killings of Palestinians along with the theft and or destruction of homes, land animals and crops by Israelis with none ever being held accountable for their actions is reminiscent of hitler's third reich's actions against all the peoples of the nations they conquered and occupied, especially Jews, Roma, socialist, communist, intellectuals, gays, trade unionist, practising Christians and Catholics and Church leadership. The only difference between nazi Germany and present day Israel is animals were protected by laws better than the aforementioned people in nazi Germany, animal cruelty and abuse is tolerated in Israel. At least Israeli President Isaac Herzog has the moral courage to publicly denounce and condemn extremist and inhuman brutality by Israelis on Palestinians. While it seems the entire corrupt fascist netanyahu government has endorsed holocaust hypocrisy Pres Herzog is calling on Israeli citizens, politicians, soldiers, police, judges, West Bank settlers, East Jerusalem settlers, prison guards, prison administrators, shin bet and mossad to stop the property destruction, animal cruelty, beatings, torture, murders, rape, theft, pedophelia and beastiality being committed by Israelis throught the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, Southern Lebanon and even Israel proper. These from the New York Times.....

In West Bank, Latest Victim of Israeli Settler Violence Shocks in a New Way


A video of a Palestinian family’s dog being savagely beaten has spread widely in the days after the attack.

Cruelty has become commonplace in the West Bank, where extremist Israeli settlers beat and shoot Palestinians, steal their sheep, uproot their olive groves and torch cars and homes. The settlers, outlaws in a multitude of ways, seldom face consequences for their actions.

But even for Palestinians living under the constant threat of being attacked, some violence retains the capacity to shock.

That was the case when a video went viral that showed a settler menacing a year-and-a-half-old dog with a club in each fist — and swinging hard, beating her over the head.

In the video, the dog, a Belgian Malinois named Lucy, squeals in pain and tries to scramble away. But she had been chained to an olive tree to keep her in the shade on a hot afternoon.

What follows, recorded by the dog’s owners, a Palestinian family in the village of Atara, is extremely difficult to watch, and to describe.

Until recently, the violence in Atara had followed a more typical playbook, aimed at driving Palestinians to flee for safety — abandoning their homes, pastures and farmlands to the encroaching settlers, so that Arab spaces shrink and Jewish spaces expand.

A group of young settlers established an illegal outpost, called Kfar Tarfon, last summer about three-quarters of a mile from the Abu Rejalah family’s home in hilly Atara, north of Ramallah.

The illegal settler outpost Kfar Tarfon, seen from Ibrahim Abu Rejalah’s house.Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times


They pelted Palestinians’ cars with stones along the main road into town, residents said. They harassed a Bedouin sheep farmer on the edge of Atara until he gave up and moved. Residents of the village said they felt too afraid last fall to harvest hundreds of olive trees just downhill from the outpost.

Then the settlers took an interest in the Abu Rejalah family, which is growing, and not fleeing, as the seven sons of Hassan Abu Rejalah, 50, begin to marry and have children of their own. Their expanding home, a three-story construction site, is visible from Kfar Tarfon across a small valley.

The settlers herded their sheep through the family’s small hillside plot, destroying crops, according to Mr. Abu Rejalah, two of his sons and other members of their extended family. They drove up to the family’s doorstep as if they owned the place, stealing harvested vegetables and disabling a driveway gate in plain view of surveillance cameras.

And they accused two members of the family of attacking them, according to Mr. Abu Rejalah. The family said the accusation was false. On Jan. 9, Israeli soldiers arrested his sons Ibrahim, 31, and Daoud, 26, who were beaten by soldiers, taken to an Israeli police station, imprisoned in a military prison for five days and then released without being charged, Ibrahim and his father said.

Asked about the arrests, the Israeli military confirmed that soldiers had detained Palestinians after an Israeli civilian reported that they had thrown stones at him. It did not address whether the Palestinians had been beaten. It said they were turned over to the police, who did not respond to questions about the incident.

Such experiences are all too familiar to Palestinians across the West Bank.

What was unusual was the cruelty to animals.


Last fall, a neighbor of the Abu Rejalahs’ who lives closer to the settlers’ outpost discovered a dead donkey hanging from one of his olive trees, residents said. It was cited as one of the reasons that villagers forsook the yearly olive harvest, a fixture of Palestinian life and important revenue source.


Members of the Abu Rejalah family said that on Feb. 18, they discovered a settler grazing his sheep on their property and throwing stones at another dog, Angel, a part-Malinois mixed breed. Two days later, the dog died from his wounds.


The olive tree to which the dog was tied when she was beaten. Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times

No one photographed that attack, but on May 14, when a lanky settler showed up at the family’s home and threw a stone at a window, Ibrahim recorded video from inside the house. He also called the Israeli police and Palestinian security services. Israeli soldiers soon arrived, he said, and sent the man away.

Ibrahim said that the Israeli and Palestinian officers had cautioned him: “As long as they’re around, don’t go outside.”


The same settler — whom the police said Thursday that they had identified — returned the next day at around 6 p.m. No one went outside. Two family members took out their cellphones and pressed record.

In the videos, which have been verified by The New York Times, the young man, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, holds a wooden club and is accompanied by two white dogs of his own. He paces back and forth, scanning the windows of the house. Then he walks down to the olive tree to which Lucy is chained. Nearby, another dog, Cheetah, not on a chain, is keeping her company.



Graphic footage shows an Israeli settler repeatedly beating a Palestinian family’s dog in the West Bank. The video has been edited to avoid showing the most violent scenes. (Go to the New York Times to see the video in their article.)CreditCredit...The Abu Rejalah family (This is not the full video from the New York Times article, which they verified. This has parts of the video provided by the Abu Rejalah family and some video of Lucy being treated by a vet. This video is from The Times of Israel and Al Jazeera). 


The man picks up a grapefruit-size rock and throws it at one of the dogs. Cheetah, bloodied, runs away. Lucy cannot.

The man, now holding a club in each hand, begins to beat her, hard.

The dog tries to put the tree between herself and the man. But he reaches around the tree to strike her. Seeing her wounded, he moves in.


He pummels her head, swinging both clubs. Once. Twice. Only on at least the 17th double-blow does the dog collapse.

The attacker doesn’t stop. He beats her nine more times.

Ibrahim Abu Rejalah said he called the Israeli police while the attack was still underway and was told that soldiers would be sent immediately. He said that police and soldiers only showed up days later, on Sunday.


The Abu Rejalah family are big dog lovers. They now have six dogs, after one, named Angel, died after being attacked in February. Another, Cheetah, shown here, was wounded on May 15.Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times


Asked about the case, the Israeli police said in a statement on Thursday that it only learned of the incident after video of the attack went viral. It said its investigation had been “intensive,” and called on the attacker to “turn himself in, as the long arm of the police will reach him.”

In its own statement, the Israeli military added that Kfar Tarfon was an “illegal outpost” and was “expected to be evacuated.”


At the settlers’ outpost on Tuesday, two men approached by Times reporters both refused to comment.

“There’s nothing for you here,” one said in Hebrew.

When shown a still image from the video of the attack on the dog and asked to identify the attacker, the man said nothing and walked away.

The dog survived, somehow. Her skull was fractured in only two places, beneath a 10-centimeter gash, said Dr. Ashraf Shiban, a veterinarian in Rama, in northern Israel. Her treatment is being paid for by an Israeli animal-rescue group.

The dog was blinded in her left eye, but Dr. Shiban said Wednesday that she was already eating again. In time, he said, she should recover.


A still from a video of Lucy bleeding after she was attacked.Credit...Abu Rejalah family

Members of the Abu Rejalah family said they feared further attacks from the Kfar Tarfon settlers, particularly now that they have spoken up publicly. They expressed little confidence that the attacker would be punished.


But they seemed just as disbelieving that the attack had even occurred in the first place.

“I worked for years inside Israel,” said Hassan Abu Rejalah. “Every house has a pet, a dog or a cat. They love pets.

“What would make them do such a thing, if not to scare off people?”

Fatima AbdulKarim, James McManagan and Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting.

David M. Halbfinger is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. He also held that post from 2017 to 2021. He was the politics editor from 2021 to 2025.

A version of this article appears in print on May 23, 2026, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: In Violent West Bank, Vicious Attack on Dog Goes Beyond the Pale

Israel’s President Excoriates Growing Israeli Violence and Brutality


In a speech, Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, delivered a grave indictment of settler attacks in the West Bank and abuse of prisoners.


Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, on Sunday delivered an unusually harsh indictment of what he described as “a terrible process of brutalization” creeping into Israeli society.

He cited examples of thuggery like a surge of “mob” violence by Jews against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the abuse of detainees in Israeli custody.

Mr. Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, was speaking at an event to award the annual Jerusalem Unity Prize at his official residence. The award was established by the families of three Israelis who were abducted and killed by Palestinians in the West Bank in 2014.

“I wish I could speak today only about unity,” Mr. Herzog said before launching into a discussion of the actions taken by some Israelis that have prompted international censure and, he said, are “threatening us all.”

“There are segments among us that are barely shocked by violence anymore,” Mr. Herzog said. “Certain other segments treat it lightly.”

He warned that extremist and inhuman behavior is being normalized, and even celebrated, by some people on the margins of Israeli society and that such violent conduct was “threatening to enter the mainstream.”

Mr. Herzog also took note of the rise of gun violence within Israel’s Arab minority, which makes up about a fifth of the population. And he denounced the “disgraceful and ugly conduct by extremists against Christians and Muslims who live among us.”

But he reserved particular condemnation for extremist settlers in the West Bank, describing them as a lawless, anarchistic mob whose attacks “defile our home and depart from every basic norm — moral, legal or Jewish.”

And he excoriated what he called “brutal acts” against detainees by “a handful of people who think that detainees, those under interrogation or suspects have no human rights at all.”


Israeli presidents as a rule act as a unifying voice and avoid controversy. But Mr. Herzog appeared to be expressing frustration at the lack of limits placed by members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history.

Mr. Netanyahu himself has minimized the intensifying and sometimes deadly settler violence against Palestinians as the work of “a handful of kids.” Israeli security forces often turn a blind eye to the violence, and in some cases join the attackers in the service of expanding the Jewish settlement project.

The Israel Prison Service and other authorities issue flat denials of abuse in detention facilities despite mounting evidence of mistreatment of detainees, including sexual assault.

Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is widely accused of encouraging thuggish behavior. He has boasted of toughening conditions for Palestinian security prisoners.

Last week, Mr. Ben-Gvir posted a video of himself taunting detained pro-Palestinian activists while they were handcuffed and pinned down to the deck of a ship. Israeli forces had intercepted their flotilla, which was aimed at breaching Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. In the minute-long video, at least one of the detainees can be seen being manhandled by police officers.

Mr. Ben-Gvir’s actions drew outrage both abroad and at home — including a rebuke from Mr. Netanyahu, a political ally.

On Sunday, Mr. Ben-Gvir took umbrage at Mr. Herzog’s remarks, which made use of a Hebrew word that can be translated as “bestial.”

“A president of a country who calls hundreds of thousands of citizens of the State of Israel beasts is not fit to be president,” he said on social media. “Period.”


Isabel Kershner, a senior correspondent for The Times in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.



Around the World With The Times

Our reporters across the globe take you into the field.