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Ex-French Foreign Minister: Natural to Be Antisemitic After Damage by IDF
Bernard Kouchner, former Foreign Minister of France, in Manhattan, New York, US, Sept. 22, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Alfiky
JNS.org — “How can you not be antisemitic when you see the damage done by the Israeli army? Look at Gaza, it’s a field of murder and disaster. Families are breaking up,” former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared on Sunday.
He spoke in an interview on with Paris Jewish radio station Radio J.
He added, “of course there were Hamas attacks on Oct. 7. And God knows that revolted me. But to take revenge with 40,000 dead, if the figure is true,” before being interrupted by the journalist, Frédéric Haziza.
“You’re saying with what’s happening in Gaza, it’s normal to be antisemitic?” Haziza asked him.
“It’s not normal, but the reaction can be that,” answered Kouchner, who was foreign minister from 2007 to 2010 under President Nicolas Sarkozy.
“Antisemitism is the science of fools. It’s a very deep-seated evil. France has always been antisemitic,” he added.
Criticizing Israel’s “disproportionate war” in Gaza, Kouchner said that as a former humanitarian physician (he co-founded Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and founded Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World), he could not help but feel indignant. “A lot of people have been massacred. It’s a murderous reaction. I’m not satisfied with that,” he said. “I’ve spent my life caring for people.”
Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rebuked French President Emmanuel Macron for calling for a partial arms embargo on Israel.
“I have a message for President Macron. Today, Israel is defending itself on seven fronts against the enemies of civilization,” said Netanyahu. “All civilized countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side. Yet President Macron and some other Western leaders are now calling for an arms embargo against Israel. Shame on them,” he said, adding: “What a disgrace.”
Israel, Netanyahu said, will “win with or without their support, but their shame will continue long after the war is won.”
The rebuke is part of a deterioration in relations between Israel and France. Macron, a centrist, is under a fierce attack by the left-wing over his country’s relations with Israel and his administration’s attempts to limit anti-Israel rioting.
Macron called for sanctions on Israel in an interview aired with the France Inter radio station on Oct. 5. “I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza. France is not delivering any,” he said.
After the Hamas invasion of Israel, antisemitic acts in France jumped by 1,000 percent in the last quarter of 2023. Since the start of 2024, they have almost tripled, with “887 acts” recorded in the first half of the year, according to figures from the French ministry of interior.
Kouchner was born in Avignon in 1939, to a Jewish father and a Protestant mother. His paternal grandparents were Russian-born Jews who immigrated to France and died later in Auschwitz.
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Trump Administration to Release Over $5 Billion School Funding That It Withheld
US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and President Donald Trump, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, March 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
President Donald Trump’s administration will release more than $5 billion in previously approved funding for K-12 school programs that it froze over three weeks ago under a review, which had led to bipartisan condemnation.
“(The White House Office of Management and Budget) has completed its review … and has directed the Department to release all formula funds,” Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the U.S. Education Department, said in a statement, adding funds will be dispersed to states next week.
Further details on the review and what it found were not shared.
A senior administration official said “guardrails” would be in place for the amount being released, without giving details.
Early in July, the Trump administration said it would not release funding previously appropriated by Congress for schools and that an initial review found signs the money was misused to subsidize what it alleged was “a radical leftwing agenda.”
States say $6.8 billion in total was affected by the freeze. Last week, $1.3 billion was released.
After the freeze, a coalition of mostly Democratic-led states sued to challenge the move, and 10 Republican US senators wrote to the Republican Trump administration to reverse its decision.
The frozen money covered funding for education of migrant farm workers and their children; recruitment and training of teachers; English proficiency learning; academic enrichment and after-school and summer programs.
The Trump administration has threatened schools and colleges with withholding federal funds over issues like climate initiatives, transgender policies, pro-Palestinian protests against U.S. ally Israel’s war in Gaza and diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
Republican US lawmakers welcomed the move on Friday, while Democratic lawmakers said there was no need to disrupt funding in the first place.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon separately said she was satisfied with what was found in the review and released the money, adding she did not think there would be future freezes.
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Israel to Resume Airdrop Aid to Gaza on Saturday, Military Says
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
Israel will resume airdrop aid to Gaza on Saturday night, the Israeli military said, a few days after more than 100 aid agencies warned that mass starvation was spreading across the enclave.
“The airdrops will include seven pallets of aid containing flour, sugar, and canned food to be provided by international organizations,” the military added in a statement.
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Trump Says Hamas ‘Didn’t Want to Make a Deal,’ Now Likely to Get ‘Hunted Down’
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – US President Donald Trump on Friday said the Palestinian jihadists of Hamas did not want to make a deal on a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza.
“Now we’re down to the final hostages, and they know what happens after you get the final hostages. And basically because of that, they really didn’t want to make a deal,” Trump said.
The comments followed statements by Middle East peace envoy Steve Witkoff and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the effect that Israel was now considering “alternative” options to achieve its goals of bringing its hostages home from Gaza and ending the terror rule of Hamas in the coastal enclave.
Trump added he believed Hamas leaders would now be “hunted down.”
On Thursday, Witkoff said the Trump administration had decided to bring its negotiating team home for consultations following Hamas’s latest proposal. Witkoff said overnight that Hamas was to blame for the impasse, with Netanyahu concurring.
Trump also dismissed the significance of French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that Paris would become the first major Western power to recognize an independent Palestinian state.
Macron’s comments, “didn’t carry any weight,” the US leader said.
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