Prime Minister Netanyahu to meet with Elon Musk next week
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 5, 2023. Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh September 14, 2023
Editor’s note: This story has been updated.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s forthcoming U.S. trip, his first since he returned to office in December, is set to include a meeting with Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter. The prime minister’s office confirmed the meeting on Thursday. Netanyahu is set to hold discussions about artificial intelligence with tech leaders during a one-day trip next Monday to Silicon Valley.
The meeting won’t be the first time Netanyahu has spoken with Musk. In June, the prime minister chatted with Musk by phone shortly after Musk drew fire for making inflammatory posts about George Soros.
Musk, who rebranded Twitter to X, has been embroiled in a feud with the Anti-Defamation League in recent days, blaming the organization for scaring away advertisers and resulting in a $4 billion loss in revenue. The ADL denies this and continues to criticize Musk for giving a stage to neo-Nazis and those with antisemitic views.
Musk has himself made a number of disturbing comments, including promoting a QAnon conspiracy theory, quoting Nazis, engaging with antisemites, and comparing George Soros, the Jewish billionaire philanthropist, to the X-Men comic book villain Magneto.
“No one should allow this meeting to give cover to Musk’s explicit engagement in and embrace of antisemitism, for so many reasons,” Amy Spitalnick, head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, wrote on Sunday. Hadar Susskind, chief executive of Americans for Peace Now, called it “repulsive.”
“It’s deeply disturbing that Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the world’s only Jewish state, is flying across America to seek the counsel and support from a notorious enabler of anti-Jewish hate speech,” Offir Gutelzon, a tech veteran and co-founder of the Israeli expatriate protest movement UnXeptable, told the Washington Post.
Netanyahu previously praised Musk, calling him “a person whose intelligence and contribution to humanity I greatly appreciate.” In addition to leading Twitter, Musk is also the head of SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink, a company building computer chips to implant in people’s brains. A new biography of Musk, by historian Walter Isaacson, published on Tuesday.
Figures in Netanyahu’s coalition have both criticized Musk and defended him from antisemitism charges. In May, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Musk’s Soros comments had crossed the line, but the foreign minister later disavowed that condemnation. Soon afterward, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli called Musk “an amazing entrepreneur and a role model” and denied that his criticism of Soros was antisemitic. Separately, Israel’s health Ministry criticized comments Musk had made about the COVID-19 vaccine as “fake news.”
Musk’s recent attack on the ADL, an organization broadly popular with American Jews and the general public, was condemned by major Jewish groups.
Netanyahu, himself, has faced fierce criticism from American Jewish leaders for refusing to engage in meaningful negotiations to reach broad consensus on a package of judicial overhaul measures that would weaken the independence of the Israeli Supreme Court.
The Israeli leader is expected to arrive in New York next Tuesday for the United Nations General Assembly, where he is set to deliver a speech on Friday. Netanyahu is expected to meet with President Joe Biden while in the U.S., but it’s still unclear if Netanyahu will travel to the White House for a traditional Oval Office meeting or meet on the sidelines of the U.N. conference. Netanyahu is also expected to meet with a few Jewish leaders in New York.
The JTA contributed to this report.
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