Elon Musk to meet Israeli President amid accusations of amplifying anti-Jewish hatred
Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk will meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog to discuss rising antisemitism online. Musk has been accused of amplifying anti-Jewish hatred on his social media platform.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who is also accused by civil rights groups of amplifying anti-Jewish hatred on his X (formerly Twitter), will meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Israelis whose relatives have been held by Hamas in Gaza today, Monday, November 27.
During the meeting, the Israeli President will emphasize the need to act to combat rising antisemitism online, Herzog's office announced on Sunday night, Reuters reported.
The tech entrepreneur did not respond to requests for comment through spokespeople for Tesla and X, formerly known as Twitter. His visit coincides with a four-day truce in an Israeli war with Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza during which 40 of the 240 hostages Israel says have been held by Hamas have returned to Israel.
Israel's Channel 12 said Musk would also meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. There was no immediate comment from his office.
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.
During that visit, before the war, about 200 people protested efforts by Netanyahu's right-wing government to curb the powers of Israeli courts. They gathered outside Tesla's California factory, where the meeting took place.
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”, as per Reuters reports.
The White House condemned what it called an "abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate" that "runs against our core values as Americans."
Major U.S. 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 that will lead to a "white genocide."
Antisemitism and Islamophobia have risen in the United States and worldwide, including 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% from the year-earlier period, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization 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."
Currently, he is developing an artificial intelligence startup AI, and Israel is considered a world leader in the field, thanks to burgeoning computing and robotics industries.
(With Reuters inputs)
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Business NewsNewsWorldElon Musk to meet Israeli President amid accusations of amplifying anti-Jewish hatred
First Published:27 Nov 2023, 10:08 AM IST
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