Elon Musk to meet Israeli president amid antisemitism accusations on X

Elon Musk will meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog along with Israelis whose relatives have been held by Hamas in Gaza, following accusations he helped amplify anti-Jewish hatred on his X social media platform.

Announcing the meeting, which takes place on Monday, Herzog’s office said: “In their meeting, the president will emphasize 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, the Reuters news agency reported.

Mr Musk has also faced accusations of tolerating antisemitic messages on the platform since purchasing it last year, and the content on X has faced increased scrutiny since the war between Israel and Hamas began.

His visit coincides with the four-day truce between Israel and Hamas.

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 18 September, 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 15 November 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.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak,  who had an unusual sit-down interview with Mr Musk to close his AI summit earlier this month, has also responded to questions about Mr Musk’s posts during an interview with Bloomberg.

In the interview on Sunday night he said: “I condemn antisemitism in all its forms. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Elon Musk or you’re someone on the street who’s shouting abuse at someone who happens to be walking past, that’s wrong in all its forms.

“Antisemitism in all its forms is completely and utterly wrong.”

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.”

Musk is developing an artificial intelligence startup xAI, and Israel is considered a world leader in the field, thanks to burgeoning computing and robotics industries.