LONDON — Police launched an investigation Monday after four ambulances belonging to a Jewish community ambulance service were set on fire in north London. The Metropolitan Police were called to Golders Green, where there is a large Jewish community, early Monday after four Hatzalah ambulances were set alight. In a statement the Met said the arson attack is being treated as an “antisemitic hate crime.” Keir Starmer condemned the “deeply shocking antisemitic arson attack.” Writing on X, the British prime minister said: “My thoughts are with the Jewish community who are waking up this morning to this horrific news. Antisemitism has no place in our society.” Health Secretary Wes Streeting echoed Starmer’s comments calling the event a “sickening attack on Jewish ambulances.” He urged the public to “stand together against antisemitic hatred.” No injuries were reported and the fires have since been put out, but nearby houses were evacuated as a precaution. Explosions linked to the attack were also reported. The Met said it believes those were linked to gas canisters on the ambulances. The attack comes months after two people were killed in a terrorist attack at a Manchester synagogue last October. Superintendent Sarah Jackson said police are looking for three suspects. “We know this incident will cause a great deal of community concern and officers remain on scene to carry out urgent enquiries,” she added.

TOULOUSE, France — The prospect of the hard-left France Unbowed party taking control of Toulouse, France’s fourth-largest city and home to Europe’s best-known airplane maker, is putting industry on edge. It’s not just that a win in the second round of local elections Sunday could give the party’s anticapitalist leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a major boost ahead of next year’s presidential election. That’s a concern for later. The immediate fear is that if France Unbowed makes history here — the party has never come close to controlling such a big metropolis — it will heap taxes on local icons like Airbus to pay for a generous manifesto that includes water subsidies, free public transport for residents under 26 years old, and free school meals and educational supplies. “I’m concerned it will jeopardize plans for new firms and factories to open in Toulouse, including the future prospects of Airbus,” said Pierre-Olivier Nau, the president of the employers’ lobby MEDEF in the Haute-Garonne department, which includes Toulouse. Nau also worries that the hard left’s opposition to adding a high-speed rail connection between Bordeaux and Toulouse, due to cost at least €14 billion, will harm businesses that have been expecting it a long time. France Unbowed’s mayoral hopeful argues the project will damage the environment and push up rents in Toulouse by attracting commuters or remote workers from other cities with higher salaries. A TIGHT RACE MEDEF and other business lobbies are now scrambling to react, given France Unbowed was never expected to get this close to power in Toulouse. Its candidate, lawmaker François Piquemal, was polling behind his Socialist Party rival François Briançon in the run-up to the first round of the vote last Sunday. The Socialist leadership had vowed not to work with the hard left after the torrent of criticism unleashed against Mélenchon following accusations of antisemitic behavior and his unapologetic reaction to the death of a far-right activist. So Piquemal’s second-place finish and his quickly formed alliance with Briançon to topple the longtime center-right mayor, Jean-Luc Moudenc, came as a surprise. The runoff is expected to be close. A poll released Thursday showed Moudenc winning by just two points in the second round, within the margin of error. Two local employers’ lobbies recently slammed the hard left’s plans for Toulouse, and a group of 350 local celebrities, including rugby luminaries and business owners, signed an open letter calling on citizens to vote against France Unbowed. “A lot of business projects have been put on hold,” said Nau. Piquemal says this is scaremongering. The 41-year-old former teacher denied he will raise taxes and downplayed talk among business leaders that Airbus, the region’s dominant employer responsible for more than 200,000 direct and indirect jobs, would reduce investments or shift facilities if he were elected. Airbus declined a request for comment. A general view shows an entrance of the Airbus Defence and Space campus in Toulouse on October 16, 2024. | Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images “Moudenc’s policies, but also [President Emmanuel] Macron’s policies, have worsened living conditions in Toulouse,” Piquemal told reporters in Toulouse on Thursday. “We are the ones who support jobs, we support companies,” he added. “We are the ones defending small shop owners against big corporations.” A soft-spoken man with a light beard and warm manner, Piquemal is characteristic of the new generation of radical left activists in France. He’s just as comfortable discussing toxic masculinity and making videos on TikTok as he is campaigning for rent controls or against Israel’s war in Gaza. He was aboard the so-called Freedom Flotilla with Greta Thunberg and MEP Rima Hassan, carrying aid to Gaza before they were all arrested by Israeli forces. Piquemal, however, is much more understated than his party’s flamethrowing leader. But he’s benefiting from the success of Mélenchon’s adversarial approach to politics. France Unbowed is trying to establish itself as the ultimate anti-establishment party ahead of what is expected to be a showdown with the far right in next year’s presidential election. Most polls show Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s party, the National Rally, is currently the favorite in the race for the Elysée. “France Unbowed is the most solid, the best-placed to build a barrage against the far right,” said Ismael Youssouf-Huard, a France Unbowed activist and candidate for the Toulouse city council. “Mélenchon is the sensible choice against the National Rally,” he said. Results in the first round of voting have gone some way toward validating Mélenchon’s provocative approach. France Unbowed won the poor, diverse city of Saint-Denis in the Paris suburbs outright in the first round and is on track to score the mayor’s job in the industrial northeastern city of Roubaix. Hard-left candidate François Piquemal talking to voters in the impoverished Reynerie neighbourhood in Toulouse. | Clea Caulcutt/POLITICO The election in Toulouse is seen as a major test case for Mélenchon ahead of the 2027 presidential election. Can he and his party confirm its leadership role on the left ahead of the presidential election or will more moderate voters, turned off by the hard left’s radicalism, flock toward the opposition? ‘ARE YOU READY FOR SUNDAY?’ At a market squashed between a burnt-out drug dealers’ den and a tower block in the Reynerie neighborhood, Piquemal is trying to get people to vote. “Are you ready for Sunday?” he asked, as he handed out leaflets. “You need to go and vote.” In the Reynerie market, shoppers are pleased to see him. “I’m so happy he did well in the first round,” said Claude Compas, a retired special education teacher. Thibaut Cazal, a leftwing candidate for the city council, hopes to beat abstention in the poorer neighbourhoods of Toulouse. | Clea Caulcutt/POLITICO But some voters are worried about the prospect of the far left running the city. “They say they’ll give free public transport to the youth, but nothing’s free,” said retiree Abdallah Taberkokt. “Who’s going to pay? We are.” Piquemal was generally warmly received — little surprise considering Reynerie swung heavily for him in the first round of the vote. Still, Piquemal thought there was more excitement than usual in his core constituencies. He said he was harnessing “greater momentum” than during the last local election six years ago, when Moudenc narrowly defeated a more moderate candidate backed by a united left. Piquemal’s supporters believe their champion will pave the way for a unified left, despite the fact that the first round of voting exposed deep divisions nationally over local alliances with Mélenchon and the hard left. “These local elections are going to make history,” said Thibaut Cazal, a candidate for councilor alongside Piquemal. “It’ll show that left-wing families can be reconciled.” France Unbowed may still fall short in Toulouse. But even if it does, the party will have proved that it cannot be ignored ahead of the big presidential showdown in 2027.

PARIS — Far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon is emerging from this month’s municipal elections as France’s chief political disrupter, building momentum he hopes will turn him into the leading contender against the far right in next year’s presidential race. The nightmare scenario for France’s beleaguered center left, however, is that Mélenchon would make for a highly divisive presidential candidate, and polling suggests he could ultimately gift a win to the far-right National Rally in 2027. The 74-year-old former teacher took a highly abrasive, confrontational approach to the local elections — stoking controversy with his unapologetic response to the killing of a far-right activist, and later with comments that were condemned as antisemitic. But this pugnacious strategy — slammed by his critics as a “brutalization” of politics — seems to have paid off, with his France Unbowed party winning big in key target areas like working-class and immigrant communities in Sunday’s first round. Mélenchon has hailed his results as a “magnificent breakthrough.” France Unbowed won the poor, diverse city of Saint-Denis in the suburbs of Paris outright, and he looks well-placed to win mayoral contests in the northeastern city of Roubaix and in France’s fourth-largest city, Toulouse. DIVISIVE LEADER Mélenchon’s performance now looks set to have major consequences across France’s political landscape. He is anathema to France’s centrists, and his political rise only heightens the perception that the country’s leftist camp will be rudderless and riven by internal feuds, just as the country faces its most momentous election in years, with Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella from the far-right National Rally as the current favorites for the presidency. For now, it also looks highly improbable that such an inflammatory figure as Mélenchon can stop the far right if he qualifies for the second round of the presidential vote next year. While he describes French politics as an “us-against-them” battle on the extremes, and sees France Unbowed as the only party that can lead a “single front” against the far right, polling suggests the French electorate is extremely wary of him. If Mélenchon were to make it to a runoff in 2027, a poll in November suggested he would be smashed by Bardella. According to the survey by Odoxa, 74 percent would pick the National Rally leader for the Elysée. “It’s not at all certain that France Unbowed can widen its electorate to the [centrist] Macron-backing voters,” said Ipsos pollster Mathieu Gallard. French far-right Rassemblement National party’s President Jordan Bardella speaks after the first round of France’s 2026 municipal elections in Beaucaire, south-eastern France on March 15, 2026. | Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images “Mélenchon is a great political machine that mobilizes the left-wing electorate … but he is also a machine that scares away more moderate voters,” he said. DISARRAY ON THE LEFT Not everyone agrees that France Unbowed’s results on Sunday were as emphatic as Mélenchon is making them out to be. The center-left Socialist Party and its allies are still on track to hold onto many more cities and towns, including Marseille and Montpellier. And the hard left’s combative messaging has not been successful everywhere. “There are towns where their results are quite disappointing,” said pollster Gallard, pointing to suburbs in Paris and Lyon. But even if the hard left’s victories turn out to be less impressive on closer inspection, they are still sending shockwaves through the rest of the left. The Socialist Party, which has been hoping for a comeback after a decade of center-right politics under Macron, is the first and most obvious of Mélenchon’s victims. The moderate left very publicly condemned France Unbowed when Mélenchon refused to distance himself from the ultra-left group that was involved in the death of far-right activist Quentin Deranque. Shock then turned to horror last month when Mélenchon was accused of antisemitism after mocking the pronunciation of Jewish names and playing up the Jewishness of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Marine Le Pen (L) and Jordan Bardella arrive at the Hotel Matignon to attend a meeting of party leaders on the conflict in Iran, hosted by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, in Paris on March 11, 2026. | Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images “He’s the Jean-Marie Le Pen of our times,” said Raphaël Glucksmann, a Jewish politician from the center left who was targeted by Mélenchon. Glucksmann was referring to Marine Le Pen’s father, who founded the National Front and downplayed the Holocaust. In the wake of Sunday’s results, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure tried to hold the line against France Unbowed, pledging there would be no “national alliance.” But within hours the Socialists were striking deals at the local level, including in France’s third-largest city, Lyon.  “We’ll get attacked all week,” warned Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, a Socialist former lawmaker, who slammed the “lack of clarity” over the party’s position. “What we’ll win now, we’ll lose in the presidential election because we won’t be credible,” he said. In another sign of division, the Socialists and the Greens have also been at each other’s throats over whether to team up with France Unbowed. GAMING THE TWO-ROUND ELECTION For Mélenchon, such divisions are good news. Olivier Faure, first secretary of the Socialist Party, during a press conference in Lyon. France on March 10, 2026. | Albin Bonnard/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images After blowing up France’s traditional parties, President Emmanuel Macron has left a fragmented political landscape ahead of the 2027 presidential election, along with a weakened centrist coalition. With the French president unable to run for a third consecutive term, there’s a surplus of presidential hopefuls on the starting line. This could lower the threshold of votes needed to qualify for the runoff vote against the far right. Candidates such as Mélenchon, who have a dedicated and loyal voter base, may be able to pull past more consensual candidates who could cancel each other out. “That’s his strategy,” said a Socialist Party adviser who, like others quoted in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss party politics. “We are capable of taking a dive in elections, but France Unbowed never takes a dive, they never go under 10 percent” in national elections, the adviser said. “But there isn’t a scenario in which he wins in a runoff vote against Bardella.” The difficulty for the moderate left is compounded by the fact that Mélenchon is one of the most charismatic politicians on the left. He has even drawn the reluctant admiration of Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, who called him “the most cultured” politician around. But what’s true of the left is also to some extent true of the conservatives and the center right, which are enmeshed in internal squabbling to see who can assume Macron’s mantle. “What are the political offers on the table and who is there to embody them?” asked a close ally of the French president. “I can see what the extremes are offering, but in between, it’s really not clear,” he said. That’s a gap Mélenchon is trying to exploit.

LONDON — A U.K. minister hit out Tuesday at a planned march associated with the Iranian regime due to take place in London this weekend. The annual Al Quds Day rally, which has taken place since 1979, is scheduled for Sunday. Courts Minister Sarah Sackman told Times Radio: “I’m clear that hate on marches like the Al Quds march has no place in British society. The authorities and the police should take the enforcement action needed against these marches.” Sackman said a decision about whether the march could happen would be made by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and the police. “I don’t want to see marches and the views expressed in this go ahead,” Sackman said. “The decision’s not for me, but I’ve made my views very clear.” Sackman later told LBC that marchers “shouldn’t be on the streets of London calling for hate and hostility against this country. That’s thoroughly anti-British.” Organized by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), the march is named after the Arabic word for Jerusalem and part of a wider international event expressing support for a Palestinian state and opposition to Israel. A cross-party group of 90 politicians has called for Mahmood to ban the march, claiming it would legitimize Tehran’s agenda and send an “unmistakably troubling message” given the targeting of dissidents. In a letter to Met Police Commissioner Mark Rowley dated Sunday IHRC Chair Massoud Shadjareh hit back at what he described as “exaggerated and patently false claims” that the march supports terrorism and antisemitism. The demonstration has “always been good‑natured and peaceful,” Shadjareh added.

An explosion struck a synagogue in the Walloon city of Liège early Monday morning, causing material damage in an “act of antisemitism,” officials said. No one was injured or killed. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever condemned the attack on social media: “Antisemitism is an attack on our values and our society, and we must fight it unequivocally. We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in Liège and across the country.” Belgium’s Interior Minister Bernard Quintin described the incident as an “abject antisemitic act” targeting Belgium’s Jewish community and said: “Security measures around similar sites will continue to be strengthened.” Belgium’s federal judicial police anti-terrorism unit and the federal prosecutor’s office are investigating the incident. A spokesperson for the Liège mayor’s office told POLITICO: “The mayor and the municipal executive express their strongest condemnation of this extremely violent act of antisemitism, which runs counter to Liège’s tradition of respect for others. There can be no question of importing external conflicts into our city.” According to the mayor’s office, the blast caused damage to the building. Local media reported that windows on the building’s front façade were blown out. The mayor’s office said a press briefing would be held later in the day. Israel’s Ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg Idit Rosenzweig-Abu also condemned the attack. “I was shocked by the news of the attack in Liége. I am in touch with the community that is understandingly shaken and terrified. I agree with PM De Wever who said that this is an attack on Belgian society as a whole,” she said. “To prevent such attacks,  I hope we would not only see an increase in Jewish communities’ security but also a determination to fight against hate speech that incites them.”

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Ambassadors are supposed to smooth tensions, not spark them. But in recent weeks some American envoys in Europe – from Belgium to Poland and France — have found themselves at the center of very public political clashes, accusing allies of antisemitism, cutting ties with senior lawmakers, and even losing their access to government ministers. Is this simply a more combative tone? Or does it reflect something deeper — a shift in how Washington wants to engage with Europe in Donald Trump’s second term? Host Sarah Wheaton is joined by POLITICO’s senior correspondent Karl Mathiesen, who has been reporting on the growing diplomatic friction, and Ivo Daalder — a former U.S. ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama. Together they unpack whether this is about ideology, business interests, domestic political signaling — or a broader rethinking of America’s role in Europe. We’d love to hear from you. If you have a story about an undiplomatic ambassador — past or present — send us a message or a voice note on our WhatsApp. You can reach us at +32 491 05 06 29. **A message from Neste: The world needs to keep moving, but with reduced emissions. Neste’s sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel are available today. Let’s fuel change. Learn more at neste.com/change.**

America’s ambassadors in Europe are targeting just one person with their charm offensive: President Donald Trump. Everyone else — including key U.S. allies — can expect little charm and plenty of offense.  The American president’s friends, fellow real estate developers and political donors who have been awarded EU ambassadorships during Trump’s second term are ruffling feathers in their host capitals.  Their coarser style of diplomacy — America’s answer to China’s wolf warriors, who also relished defying convention and skewering their hosts — is not a bug in the system. It is the new system.  For Trump’s envoys, “the target audience is always one person. One person only,” said Eric Rubin, the former head of the American Foreign Service Association who served as ambassador to Bulgaria during Trump’s first term. The feelings of their hosts are incidental to the key tasks: courting Trump’s attention and approval — and shifting the center of European politics sharply toward the right.  The two most conspicuous envoys riling European governments are Charles Kushner in Paris and Tom Rose in Warsaw. When Charles Kushner decried French antisemitism in a letter to President Emmanuel Macron, he didn’t send it to the Élysée Palace but wrote it in the Wall Street Journal. | Julien De Rosa/AFP via Getty Images Rose tagged Trump twice in a post announcing he was severing ties to the speaker of Poland’s parliament, Włodzimierz Czarzasty, over “outrageous and unprovoked insults.” Czarzasty had said that Trump did not deserve to win a Nobel Peace Prize.  When Kushner, the ambassador to Paris who is father-in-law to Trump’s eldest daughter, decried French antisemitism in a letter to President Emmanuel Macron, he didn’t send it to the Élysée Palace, nor to Le Monde. He wrote it in the Wall Street Journal.   Last week the relationship soured further after the U.S. embassy in Paris offered pointed political commentary during the aftermath of the killing of a far-right activist. Kushner further angered the French by ignoring a summons to the foreign ministry, before a “frank and amicable” phone call smoothed things over, according to the U.S. mission in Paris on Monday.   U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Bill White, who describes the president as a friend, set three Trump-friendly priorities for embassy staff for 2026, according to two people with knowledge of the internal dynamics at the mission. Like others in this article, they were granted anonymity to protect their jobs or relationships.  Fully in line with Trump’s emphasis in his State of the Union address on commemorating the 1776 declaration of independence, White insisted on big parties to to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. He also hosted a February screening for a film about first lady Melania Trump and has prioritized media appearances that will keep him on the president’s radar. Similarly keen to keep a high profile on the channels Trump favors, NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker, widely viewed as one of Trump’s least abrasive ambassadors in Europe, prefers to appear on Fox News and Newsmax above other media. Visitors to the residence of the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg Stacey Feinberg, who was a close friend of the slain rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, will find red MAGA hats adorning the furniture, according to photos shared with POLITICO.   Multiple U.S. embassies in Europe and the State Department either declined to comment for this article or did not respond. UNDIPLOMATIC CORPS U.S. diplomats stepping on European toes is nothing new. During Trump’s first term ambassadors Richard Grenell in Berlin and Gordon Sondland in Brussels kicked hard against diplomatic norms. While Joe Biden’s man in Hungary David Pressman repeatedly criticized the government of Viktor Orbán. Nor is it unusual for the U.S. to hand plum European posts to big donors and other political appointees, rather than career diplomats. But State Department officials, former and current, complain these latest breaches of diplomatic behavior go a step further and undermine American interests and relationships nurtured for over two centuries.  “If you refuse to go to a meeting when summoned so you can work on improving the relationship, why are you even there? It’s childish, it’s embarrassing, and it drops any pretense you’re there to help your country,” one U.S. diplomat said.   “I mean, frankly, it’s rude,” a former senior State Department official added.  In the past, policy decisions and public statements would be carefully calibrated and run through multiple departments via the National Security Council and the huge State Department bureaucracy.   That process has largely been replaced by freelancing ambassadors communicating with a small group of political appointees in the White House, said Rubin.   “This is the first time in certainly our history, but probably in modern history, where a big power is attempting to conduct diplomacy without diplomats and without experts and without analysts,” he said.  The marching orders for every flashpoint involving U.S. ambassadors can be found in the lines of the National Security Strategy, published in December. It set American diplomats the task of “cultivating resistance” to the path set by Europe’s current set of leaders and celebrated the rise of “patriotic” far right parties, seen as aligned with Trump’s MAGA movement.  It takes two to have a diplomatic fight, however, and not all European countries have taken the bait.  U.S. ambassador to the U.K. Warren Stephens has “key themes he is keen to speak on” including energy and free speech, according to one U.S. official, and is “not afraid to speak his mind.” He voiced many of those during a dinner speech while standing within arms reach of British Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy in November. These interventions have raised eyebrows inside the British establishment, but so far the U.K. government has soaked up the punches.  In Greece too, Kimberly Guilfoyle the former fiancée of Trump’s son Donald Jr., has charmed and bemused in equal measure. Despite goading the Greeks over the sale of the port of Piraeus to China, her relations with her hosts in Athens are, in her telling, exceptionally rosy.   “We see each other probably three or four times a week,” she said of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during an event last week. The same went for multiple government ministers, she added. “They always take the call. It doesn’t matter if it’s the weekend, they will come over if we meet at my house, they show up.”  Esther Webber contributed reporting from London, Nektaria Stamouli from Athens and Victor Jack from Brussels.

PARIS — France’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva didn’t call for the resignation of Francesca Albanese, the embattled special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, during a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday, even though Paris had previously pledged to do so. Several European countries have demanded Albanese step down over comments she made about Israel’s war in Gaza during a televised address earlier this month, during which she made reference to a “common enemy” of humanity. Critics said that was an antisemitic smear directed at Israel, a charge Albanese strongly denied, saying her words had been willfully distorted and were not directed at Israel. Demands for Albanese’s resignation followed, led by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot and applauded by U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Kushner, who has criticized the country for not doing enough to fight antisemitism. But the speech of France’s Permanent Representative Céline Jurgensen at a meeting of the UNHRC on Wednesday contained no such call for Albanese’s resignation. Jurgensen only referred to “repeated and extremely problematic statements by a United Nations Special Rapporteur,” and called on special rapporteurs to “exercise the restraint, moderation, and discretion required by their mandate.” During his Feb. 11 speech in France’s National Assembly, however, Barrot had said that Albanese’s “provocations call for only one response: her resignation. And it is in these terms and with this firmness … that France will speak … during the session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.” Asked about the change in position, Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux referred POLITICO to earlier comments by Barrot, and said that in the minister’s view, “repeated provocations from Mrs Albanese warranted for her to have the dignity to step down.” Individual UN members have no formal way to force Albanese to resign before her term ends in 2028, short of a resolution in the Human Rights Council, which French and U.N. officials have said privately would be unlikely to pass. Albanese has said she has no intention of stepping down.

Belgium’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it’s time to “turn the page,” after a row between U.S. envoy Bill White and local politicians snowballed into a tense diplomatic spat. “Belgium and the U.S. are longstanding allies, with deep historical bonds” and should now focus on a “positive agenda,” the ministry said in a statement following a de-escalatory meeting between Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot and White. The ambassador stirred controversy last week in a long message that railed against an ongoing judicial investigation into three Antwerp mohalim — Jewish men who perform ritual circumcision. White called the court case antisemitic and Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke “very rude,” prompting an outcry over U.S. interference in Belgium’s legal system. The men are under investigation for allegedly carrying out circumcisions without involving a medical professional; an obligation under Belgian law.  White’s explosive intervention came shortly after Trump’s Polish ambassador sparked a feud with the government in Warsaw, and right before the American envoy to France, Charles Kushner, was summoned by the French government over the U.S. administration’s public comments about the death of a far-right activist after a fight in Lyon. The Belgian clash deepened further when White demanded that Conner Rousseau — leader of Flemish socialist party Vooruit — retract an Instagram video in which he compared U.S. President Donald Trump and ICE officers with Hitler. White declared that Rousseau would officially be banned entry to the U.S. over the video. The Foreign Ministry’s message Tuesday was conciliatory. “The current U.S. administration is not comparable to the Nazi regime. When a comparison is made with Nazism, productive debate ends,” its message read. It also said Prévot had confirmed that the Belgian government is committed to “combating all forms of antisemitism.” But the ministry also insisted that Belgium’s “judiciary is independent and impartial in Belgium, and that therefore its action cannot suffer from political or diplomatic interference,” and rejected “comments personally targeting Belgian politicians.” The U.S. ambassador has indicated that he’ll lift “the idea of travel restrictions” on Rousseau, the ministry also said. Upon leaving Tuesday’s meeting, the ambassador didn’t answer questions from Belgian media about the backlash against his comments. But he told broadcaster VRT that, “We had a great conversation … We are back on track.”

Belgium’s Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot has summoned Bill White, the U.S. ambassador to the country, over his comments accusing Belgium of antisemitism and lashing out against its health minister. “Any suggestion that Belgium is antisemitic is false, offensive, and unacceptable. Belgium condemns antisemitism with the greatest firmness,” Prévot wrote Monday evening in a long post on X, calling White’s statements “unacceptable.” “Personal attacks against a Belgian minister and interference in judicial matters violate basic diplomatic norms … The Ambassador has been immediately summoned for a meeting this Tuesday,” Prévot continued. White on Monday criticized Belgium’s handling of a case in Antwerp where three mohels — Jewish men who perform ritual circumcision — were placed under judicial investigation for allegedly carrying out procedures without a doctor being present. He also appeared to pressure Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke to intervene in the case. “TO BELGIUM, SPECIFICALLY YOU MUST DROP THE RIDICULOUS AND ANTI SEMITIC “PROSECUTION” NOW OF THE 3 JEWISH RELIGIOUS FIGURES (MOHELS) IN ANTWERP!” White wrote in his post. White then turned on Vandenbroucke, calling him “very rude” and claiming that at their first encounter, Vandenbroucke had refused to shake his hand or pose for a photograph together in his conference room. “You must make a legal provision to allow Jewish religious MOHELS to perform their duties here in Belgium,” White said. “Take action NOW! The world is watching. America is counting on you to do the right thing. Frank, you should do it NOW so this case ends!” After Prévot expressed his disapproval on social media, White responded with another long post. “In NO way, shape or form have we ever suggested that a political person in the Gov’t should interfere in a judicial case. That said, the case should be immediately dropped,” White wrote, adding that “it is ABSOLUTELY an issue of antisemitism.” “You either have to make a change to the procedural accreditation or you have to call prosecution of these three beautiful religiously qualified and wonderful men anti-semeitc,” he continued, misspelling the last word. White then lashed out at Vandenbroucke again. “He was very rude and was quite obnoxious. I was told he does not like my great President,” he wrote. Belgian legislation mandates that all medical procedures be performed by licensed doctors, while mohels are usually not licensed. Some 60 Jewish leaders wrote a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last May, urging the EU to condemn Belgium after police raided the homes of several mohels in Antwerp.