Musk to meet Israeli president, Gaza hostage families
Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, accused by civil rights groups of amplifying anti-Jewish hatred on his X social media platform, will meet Israeli president Isaac Herzog along with Israelis whose relatives have been held by Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) with businessman Elon Musk in Fremont, Calif. on Sept. 18, 2023. Photo by Avi Ohayon/GPO
Herzog’s office announced the meeting on Sunday night, saying, “In their meeting, the president will emphasise the need to act to combat rising antisemitism online.”
Musk, a billionaire who also runs Tesla and SpaceX, did not respond to requests for comment through spokespeople for Tesla and X, formerly known as Twitter.
Musk’s visit coincides with a four-day truce in the Israeli war with Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza, during which more than 50 of the 240 hostages Israel says were held by Hamas have returned to Israel.
Israel’s Channel 12 said Musk would also meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
Netanyahu met Musk in California on September 18 and urged him to strike a balance between protecting free expression and fighting hate speech after weeks of controversy over antisemitic content on X.
Musk responded by saying he was against antisemitism and against anything that “promotes hate and conflict,” repeating his previous statements that X would not promote hate speech.
Then on November 15 Musk agreed with a post on X that falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user who referenced the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was speaking “the actual truth.”
The White House condemned what it called an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate” that “runs against our core values as Americans.”
Major US companies including Walt Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and NBCUniversal parent Comcast paused their advertisements on his social media site.
The “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory holds that Jewish people and leftists are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants.
Antisemitism and Islamophobia have risen in the United States and worldwide, during the now seven-week-old war between Israel and Hamas.
Following the outbreak of war, antisemitic incidents in the United States rose by nearly 400 per cent from the year-earlier period, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organisation that fights antisemitism.
Musk has said X should be a platform for people to post diverse viewpoints, but the company will limit the distribution of certain posts that may violate its policies, calling the approach “freedom of speech, not reach.”
Howard Goller in Jerusalem/Reuters
