What happens when ambassadors are summoned by the host country?
politics.stackexchange.com
politics.stackexchange.com
When everything is going well, meetings between the Foreign Office and ambassadors remain private.The fact that the ambassador did not attend the meeting himself but sent a subordinate is a public affront.
What is strange is that the US ambassador's communication is not really intended for the French or French jews, but is merely a sign of support for Israel.
There is currently an Israeli media offensive in France followin President Macron's comments on the recognition of a Palestinian state. The Israeli state and its supporters are buying advertising spots on YouTube and Instagram to encourage French Jews to do their ahria with free money.
There are regular attempts to exploit anti-Semitic crimes or news stories to claim that France is hell on earth for Jews and that Israel is there to save them. But then again, we haven't yet seen Belgian commandos coming to kidnap people in France or Luxembourgers launching rockets.
The only new thing is that the US ambassador is taking part in this type of operation and behaving like an arsehole with the French Foreign Office.
I see modern day French antisemitism as a bizarre union of right wing echt French, le pen-type and modern era Islamic migration from Francophone former French colonies. Former enemies united in a common hatred.
France's problems are a function both of history, and push politics. Some of it is endogenous, some of it is externally driven. I have no doubt the same is true in Germany, Netherlands, the UK. Sure, an underlying mass migration pressure is feeding this, but many of the migrants in france pass through, seeking better times in the UK. The ones who stay, are in the main francophone, and appear to bring with them weaker guard lines against radicalism. Thats a huge bummer.
He isn't signalling this because of conviction, he's signalling this because his government wants him to, to continue to back the Netenyahu government. I wouldn't cease trade or relations with France or any EU country on these grounds, its a political dispute about recognition of Palestine, not a statement for or against antisemitism.
You know, and I know, after this evil war ends, Netenyahu is in big domestic trouble. There will probably be another weak, rightist dominated government but the court system will catch up with Bibi. Now .. what does that parallel in the USA?
The letter is a clear attempt to bully an ally into US style speech suppression by using someone that has both official position and a personal Presidential imprimatur.
It's insane that anyone listens to what he has to say. He should just be slapped in the face and sent home.
Regardless, antisemitism exists in France and elsewhere. It's just not the case that France doesn't do anything about it. These crimes are punished. Maybe not as severely as one would hope, but by French standards, it's pretty serious.
But as parent comment mentioned, the current situation has little to do with that.
And then there are going to be the ones festooned with Stars of David, and pushing for every conflict they can possibly get into so they can claim antisemitism. Those? Those I'd believe having problems, but they're not having problems because they're Jewish - they're having problems because they're assholes.
Is there antisemitism in France? I'm positive there is. Is there anti-Muslim sentiment as well? I'm positive there is. (side note, aren't middle-eastern Muslims generally considered Semites as in descendants of Shem?)
Arabs and Jews are both Semitic (in the sense of speaking Semitic languages and having Levantine origins), but the word “antisemitism” refers specifically to Jew hatred. This is mostly a historical quirk of 19th century Germans trying to come up with a more scientific sounding phrase than Judenhass.
(Also, to be pedantic: there are non-Semitic middle-eastern Muslims, as well as semitic middle-eastern non-Muslims/Jews. It turns out that “semitic” itself isn’t a super useful category, which is why “antisemitism” should really be read as a single lexeme rather than “hatred of all semites”.)
This has the same energy as “technically Elon Musk is African-American”.
Sometimes words have come to mean something specific that doesn’t precisely correspond to their literal components or etymology, and pretending not to understand this just impedes communication.
But I'll stick by my position that for a lot of people feeling put-upon it's because they're generally unpleasant not because of their ethnic, religious or other background but because of their personalities.
Personally, I'd call the current Israeli government one of the "sovereign citizens" of the world - and while there's a certain "duh" element to that because indeed nations are sovereign, the connotation I'm trying to get at here is that they have the same "doesn't play well with others" energy of the US 'sovcits'
As an identity, yes they still receive a lot of hate.
As individuals unless they wear distincrive signs like a kipa they will probably receive less hate and discrimination than say...people with red/ginger hair which is still super common. If they are transexuals and gay black redhead jews with rumanian nationality and and live with an asian partner, they are fucked.
Of course, that's not all Kushner said; he also apparently cast support for Palestinian statehood as antisemitic, which is obviously inflammatory. The more grounded in fact concerns about European antisemitism are, the more unfortunate Kushner's statement is.
It was such a mess that they were protected by three rows of riot police. You'd have to be very naive to believe that such false and hateful people could be allies to anyone.
We sometimes make fun of Americans, but we also have some great bingo cards too.
Despite Googling, I'm lost on what "ahria" means
They're saying Israel's currently spending advertising money in France hoping to convince French jews to move to Israel.
I haven't looked into the details, but Israel state and other entites promise housing assistance of up to €1,500 per month, Hebrew lessons, tax exemptions, etc. Literally free money.
A state can vocalize it's disapproval directly in a more direct and meaningful way using back channels and political ways, but this is more about giving a clear signal to everyone else.
It's PR basically.
"More about", I think, ignores the degree to which sending the message publicly to everyone else can be a very important part of sending the message to the obvious direct target.
> A state can vocalize it's disapproval directly in a more direct and meaningful way using back channels and political ways
Yeah, but "we are not allowing you to publicly save face by restricting our protest to private back channels" is itself an important way of communicating the severity of the message to the direct target.
This is Kabuki theatre, it is to show everyone else that you're dissatisfied.
If your actions have real-world consequences, they are guaranteed to send other messages beyond the one you intended. Tariffs, visa revocations, assassinations, wars, and whatever impact other people beyond their direct targets, and those people may change their behavior in unpredictable ways.
Not at all, in fact often exactly the opposite is true. The French president could have posted “fuck you for writing that letter, our recognition of Palestine has nothing to do with antisemitism” on his Twitter account. That would be a lot more precise than this diplomatic act.
Not all hate crimes involve rockets. I know a few Jews who grew up in France, and all of them report antisemitic incidents that happened to them personally, some physically violent. I’m talking mid-day paris, not some otherwise sketchy circumstances. They all fear being identified as jews in the streets of Paris.
Try to understand that.
Recalling an ambassador to their home country (the traditional phrase is "recalled for consultations with their government") in modern times usually means they're being replaced.
[1] https://www.riotimesonline.com/lulas-brazil-at-a-crossroads-...
That seems an odd clarification. Do you not believe a democratically elected leader represents a country? Every country has people who disagree with their leaders views, however this clarification on every statement would get tiring quickly.
I've also heard some similar remarks towards Obama and Biden from the right, but not nearly as much as the left with Trump. The US political sphere is increasingly divided and the Overton window is fractured as well.
Like, are they going to start shooting people? Probably not, probably it will go the same way as the LA invasion where the troops just kinda slink away after Trump gets distracted and Stephen Miller kidnaps all the immigrants he was looking for. But what happens if the Chicago PD tries to obstruct some operation or another on a day Trump got up on the wrong side of the bed?
(That's not a good thing! It's an abuse of the Guard!)
When they do something crazy, I'll be right there with you. But the President has the power to deploy the Guard to protect federal property, and while these deployments are abusive, they're not unlawful. Most of what people say about the Guard actually taking over policing is implausible. So I'm just going to call it out for the bad policy that it is and then not act like the collapse of society is imminent.
The fact that "a large part of the country" doesn't think this is a big deal should tell you something valuable about what the best next moves are.
The real worry is voting. The things you want to watch out for are stationing any military or LEOs at polling places and proscribing mail in voting.
I didn't specifically want to get into the reasoning as to why, beyond the simple fact that there is a large and increasing political divide. Trump is largely representing the majority in terms of what the population wants. The process isn't always what an individual or side may want specifically, but the results have been in line with the stated goals.
I don't have to like the guy to point this out. I usually vote LP myself. I reject far left and far right positions, but find that the far left is a much bigger group. And by "Far" I mean those whose positions are outside what most Americans would consider normative. Far right being around 5%, and doesn't include the majority of "MAGA". Far left being around 15% of the population, including those with cult-like adherence to leftist ideology and disruptive Marxist/Maoist tactics.
Whereas when Trump was making overtures to annex Canada, it was useful to the rest of the world to explain that that's something the president was talking about that weekend, as opposed to signs that this might be something the US would actually do.
It's a subtle distinction, of course, and I don't blame anyone outside the US who decides they're not going to bother making it.
After the new 50% tariffs, I doubt this remains true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWzmk_0xzCA
Ultimately my takeaway is that diplomatic protocol can seem stuffy, but it exists for a very good reason. Tiptoeing around everyone's ego might seem excessive, but it's way cheaper than e.g. fighting a needless war.
Hard to blame Zelensky for not knowing protocol when he was a comedian elected as an outsider candidate, of course.
Consider Zelensky's correct outfit when meeting royalty (green fatigues).
https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/uk-politics/ukraines-ze...
King Charles was honoured.
It can be serious. Worst case, an ambassador is summoned to receive a declaration of war. That's happened many times in the past, especially when travel delays meant wars took a long time to start. That's rare today.
This time, it's not that serious. Here's the statement by the foreign ministry of France: [1]
France learned of the allegations of the US Ambassador, Mr. Charles Kushner, who, in a letter to the President of the Republic, expressed his concern about the rise in anti-Semitism in France and reported an alleged lack of sufficient action by the French authorities to confront it.
France firmly refutes these allegations. The rise in anti-Semitic acts in France since 7 October 2023 is a reality that we deplore and to which the French authorities are fully committed to combating, as such acts are intolerable.
The Ambassador’s allegations are unacceptable. They contravene international law, in particular the duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of States as provided for in the 1961 Vienna Convention that governs diplomatic relations. Furthermore, they fall short of the quality of the transatlantic relationship between France and the United States and the trust that should result between allies.
Ambassador Kushner will be summoned to the Quai d’Orsay on Monday, 25 August.
Charles Kushner (Jared Kushner's dad, Jared Kushner being Trump's son in law, married to Ivanka Trump) and the US embassy sent their chargé d'affaires (a temporary ambassador while the real one is unavailable) instead. That can be read in several ways. Although it's a mild diplomatic insult to send a substitute, the effect is to calm the situation a bit. It helps that the substitute is a professional diplomat, not a political appointee. Le Figaro says the meeting went reasonably well, but that's what's traditionally said unless a declaration of war results.
This should go away as an issue unless Trump starts screaming about it on social media.
[1] https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/united-state...
[2] https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/convocation-de-l-ambas...
Said witness was his brother-in-law! Kushner hired a prosttitue to entrap him, filmed it and then showed his sister, how gross!
I would say "unless some further escalation directly follows"; while a declaration of war would be one case of this, there are others, such as expulsion of the ambassador, ordering the closure of some or all diplomatic facilities (embassy and/or consulates), downgrading diplomatic relations or withdrawing the host nations diplomats, or severing diplomatic relations altogether.
I guess diplomatic relations are severed until an ambassador returns to the host country.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/australia-iran-antisemitism-attac...
The nation whose ambassador was expelled may choose to downgrade relations formally, even if the other side has not, as its own protest, of course.
On the other hand, expelling an ambassador is a rare event and usually one piece of a fairly extreme diplomatic protest that involves other elements, either simultaneously or in close temporal proximity (fully cutting off relations or even declaring war would not be that unusual as accompanying actions.)
Summary: Netanyahu threatened Australian Prime Minister Albanese, and Albanese capitulated quickly.
One does not equate to the other.
What it does do however is undermine current Israeli domestic policy, which can be neatly summed up as keeping their PM out of prison by focusing on the external enemy.
So the non-semitic peoples butchering semites are accusing people trying to protect semites ( palestinians ) of being antisemitic.
Once you learn what a semite is and who these "israeli" settlers are, you realize how silly everything is.
Wars have started because of badly drafted or mishandled diplomatic notes. The Japanese diplomatic note announcing war was supposed to be delivered just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The communications between the US and Saddam Hussein before the Kuwait war left Hussein with the incorrect impression that the US would not intervene if he invaded Kuwait.
Animats in a sibling comment has the details. See section i:
> i. Delivery from the Department to Foreign Embassies in Washington, DC[…]
Executive Secretariat InfoLink seems to be doing the electronic heavy lifting.
https://thewire.in/diplomacy/six-critical-questions-raised-b...
As a world we have to return to normal and respectful behavior instead of bullying everywhere. The US under Trump is just one thing: a bully.
With great power comes great responsibility. That is the standard men (and women) are hold accountable.
People haven't watched The West Wing etc and it shows
Those real summons are very rare.
This theatre is the way countries can negotiate and communicate peacefully