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ADL CEO: Elon Musk is a ‘great innovator’ who engages with ‘users who are espousing antisemitism and hate’
(JTA) — Days after Elon Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League for billions of dollars and amplified a hashtag spread by white supremacists, the ADL’s CEO praised Musk’s business acumen but called his behavior “frustrating” and said he was spreading “age-old tropes” around blaming Jews for antisemitism.
“I’ve always tried to treat Elon and everyone at the company with respect and forthright manner and a constructive approach. I would do that again,” Greenblatt told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday.
“The truth is that he has been, Elon Musk, a great innovator in some respects, in many respects in his business pursuits,” Greenblatt said. “That’s why it’s all the more frustrating to see him engaging online with users who are espousing antisemitism and hate.”
Greenblatt’s comments came some 36 hours after Musk fired off a stream of posts on X, the social media platform he owns and renamed from Twitter, in which he accused the ADL of trying to tank the platform by encouraging an ad boycott against it.
Amid those posts, Musk directly engaged with a white supremacist on the platform and liked a post that included the hashtag #BanTheADL, which grew popular among antisemitic users. The ADL said in a statement that neo-Nazi marchers in Florida last weekend chanted “Ban the ADL.”
Musk also tweeted that he is “pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind” and that he would remove the ADL from the platform only if it broke the law.
Multiple times, Greenblatt made clear that the ADL does not see itself as right-wing or left-wing, and compared the hashtag #BanTheADL to the hashtag #DropTheADL, which represented a campaign in 2020 by progressive nonprofits to discourage partnership with the ADL.
But as the group’s surveys have documented a rising tide of antisemitism, Greenblatt said the recent hashtag is dangerous because it could motivate attacks not just against the ADL but against Jews.
“If you look at all the #BanTheADL messaging, here is, I think, the key takeaway: This is not about the ADL,” Greenblatt said. “Of course it is on some level, but it is really about the Jews. We are being used as a stand-in for our entire community.”
Some Jewish activists on the right and left who have been highly critical of the ADL seem to agree, and have also spoken out in recent days against users calling to #BanTheADL.
“We signed onto the #DropTheADL letter, proudly,” posted the group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, referring to the 2020 progressive effort. “So let’s be clear that this B@n the ADL hashtag is a Nazi campaign targeting what they see as a stand-in for Jews. It’s not disagreement. It’s not ‘anti-ADL.’ It’s antisemitic Nazi garbage, period.”
Conservative journalist Seth Mandel, who has repeatedly criticized Greenblatt, posted, in reference to a hate group, “The groypers tweeting ‘ban the ADL’ are bad people with bad intentions and bad designs.”
Greenblatt and the ADL have had something of a roller-coaster relationship with Musk’s Twitter. In October 2022, Greenblatt praised Musk, who owns the electric car company Tesla, as “an amazing entrepreneur and extraordinary innovator” and “the Henry Ford of our time,” a comparison he has since walked back owing to Ford’s outspoken antisemitism.
“I didn’t deliver the analogy very well,” he said Wednesday.
Greenblatt had a meeting with Musk, and about a month later, the ADL and NAACP led a call for companies to pause their advertising on Twitter to protest what they saw as his dismantling of guardrails against hate speech. At one point, according to the Forward, the ADL resumed paid advertising on Twitter. It told JTA on Wednesday that its paid ads had ceased, though its official X accounts, including Greenblatt’s, still pay a monthly fee for verification that enables certain features on the platform .
In the intervening months, the ADL has criticized some of Musk’s actions and statements, including invective he posted against George Soros, a liberal Jewish megadonor and frequent focus of antisemitic conspiracy theories. It also acceded to his call to condemn a South African apartheid-era protest song calling for white farmers to be killed.
Last week, Greenblatt tweeted that he had a “frank + productive conversation” with Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, about hate speech on the platform. By Friday, #BanTheADL was trending after being posted by a white supremacist and days later, Musk began his series of posts threatening litigation against the group.
That included a post in which Musk wrote, replying to a white supremacist, “The ADL, because they are so aggressive in their demands to ban social media accounts for even minor infractions, are ironically the biggest generators of anti-Semitism on this platform!”
Asked whether he thought Musk was espousing antisemitism and hate, Greenblatt sighed and said Musk was “engaging with users who are blatantly and boldly doing so, and that’s very problematic. I would say that blaming the Jews or ADL for antisemitism also kind of evokes the age-old tropes that we work so hard to fight every single day.”
Greenblatt also stood by the value of organizing ad boycotts against social media platforms, a tactic the group and other civil rights organizations used against Facebook in 2020. He said the ADL would address whatever lawsuit comes, if one does, and added that Musk’s claims were spurious.
“Blaming the Jews is a tried-and-true tactic throughout the ages,” he said. “Suggesting that the ADL, a nonprofit organization, can somehow engineer things and somehow we have more sway than the wealthiest man in the world running one of the most powerful media platforms on the planet, that has an extraordinary degree of resources at its disposal … I don’t believe it.”
With additional reporting by Asaf Shalev.
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The post ADL CEO: Elon Musk is a ‘great innovator’ who engages with ‘users who are espousing antisemitism and hate’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iranian Missile Strikes Haifa Mosque, Injures Muslim Clerics While ‘Firing Indiscriminately at Civilians’
A man walks near broken windows at a mosque that was damaged following Iran’s missile strike on Israel, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Haifa, Israel, June 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Shlush
A mosque in the Israeli city of Haifa was hit by a ballistic missile launched by Iran on Friday morning and Muslim clerics were among those injured in the attack.
Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar said Iran’s barrage of missiles targeting Haifa struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood and clerics inside the mosque sustained injuries. Haifa is a port city in the north that has a mixed Arab and Israeli population.
“The Iranian regime is targeting Muslim, Christian, and Jewish civilians, as well as civilian sites. These are war crimes,” said Sa’ar in a post on X. He also shared a video of the mosque that was hit in the missile attack.
The Iranian regime launched a missile attack on Haifa and struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood. The missile attack injured Muslim clerics who were in the mosque.
The Iranian regime is targeting Muslim, Christian, and Jewish civilians, as well as civilian… pic.twitter.com/aG9JRfyLP7— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) June 20, 2025
Sa’ar later arrived at the scene of the strike and gave a statement to the press.
Photos shared on social media show the mosque’s broken windows and other damage to the religious site, all as a result of the Iranian strike.
Haifa mosque was indeed hit in the last ballistic missile attack. pic.twitter.com/m0AUN8IPrY
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 20, 2025
“The Iranian regime is firing indiscriminately at civilians — with zero regard for who they hit,” read a post on Israel’s official X account about the missile attack in Haifa.
Iran launched around 20 to 25 ballistic missiles at Israel on Friday and at least 19 people were wounded from the strikes in Haifa, local authorities said.
A spokesperson for Israel’s national emergency response service, Magen David Adom (MDA), said its teams treated and evacuated injuries civilians that include a roughly 40-year-old man in serious condition, a 16-year-old boy in serious condition with shrapnel in his upper body, and a 54-year-old man in moderate condition with shrapnel in his lower limbs.
Friday marks one week since the start of the Israel-Iran war, which began with the Jewish state launching pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets in a campaign known as Operation Rising Lion. MDA said that since the war began on June 13, its paramedics and EMTs have treated at least 1,007 people, including 23 who have died.
The post Iranian Missile Strikes Haifa Mosque, Injures Muslim Clerics While ‘Firing Indiscriminately at Civilians’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Europe Foreign Ministers See ‘Perilous’ Moment, Urge Iran to Talk to US
European foreign ministers talk over lunch at the offices of the honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in Geneva, Switzerland June 20, 2025, before meeting with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to discuss Iran’s nuclear program. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via REUTERS
European foreign ministers urged Iran on Friday to engage with the United States over its nuclear program after high-level talks in Geneva aimed at opening negotiations for a new nuclear deal ended with little sign of progress.
The talks between the foreign ministers of Germany, Britain, France, and the EU with their Iranian counterpart sought to test Tehran’s readiness to negotiate despite there being scant prospect of Israel ceasing its attacks soon, diplomats said.
“The Iranian Foreign Minister has expressed his willingness to continue discussions on the nuclear program and more broadly on all issues, and we expect Iran to commit to the discussion, including with the United States, to reach a negotiated settlement,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.
Britain’s foreign minister David Lammy said the European countries were eager to continue talks with Iran.
“This is a perilous moment, and it is hugely important that we don’t see regional escalation of this conflict,” he said.
Tehran, under mounting pressure to agree tough curbs on its nuclear program to prevent the potential development of an atomic weapon, has repeatedly said it will not talk to the Trump administration until Israeli attacks end.
European ministers spoke ahead of their Geneva meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio who signaled that Washington was open to direct talks even as it considers joining Israeli strikes intended to smash Tehran’s nuclear capacity, diplomatic sources said.
Washington did not confirm that, though broadcaster CNN quoted a US official saying President Donald Trump supported diplomacy by allies that could bring Iran closer to a deal.
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Israeli Scientists Scramble to Save Work After Iranian Missile Hits Labs
A building at the campus of the Weizmann Institute of Science remains damaged following an Iranian missile strike on Sunday, in Rehovot, Israel, June 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
Researchers at Israel’s prestigious Weizmann Institute of Science have been scrambling to save their experiments after an Iranian missile destroyed a building containing dozens of cutting-edge laboratories.
The missile struck the institute’s campus at Rehovot, on the southern periphery of Tel Aviv, in the early hours of Sunday, damaging multiple buildings and prompting researchers to clamber into the ruins to save samples even as fire raged.
No one was hurt as the campus was empty overnight, but one part of a building collapsed, while in the remaining part the walls were blown out, exposing a tangle of twisted metal, blasted debris and blackened cement.
“We did our best to save as much of the samples as we could from the labs, from the buildings, while we were fighting the fire,” physicist Roee Ozeri, Weizmann’s vice president for development and communications, told Reuters.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the devastated site on Friday and praised the researchers as well as the rescuers of the country’s emergency services, describing both groups as the “best of Israel.”
“This building behind me, next to me, says everything,” Netanyahu said, pointing to the massive pile of rubble.
“Iran is the pre-eminent terrorist regime in the world. It must not, cannot have nuclear weapons. That is the purpose of Israel’s actions – to save itself from the Iranian threat of annihilation, but by doing so, we are saving many, many others.”
Israel began attacking Iran on June 13, saying its longtime enemy was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israel.
Israel’s strikes have killed several prominent Iranian nuclear scientists, wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military command, and damaged nuclear capabilities.
Iran has not said if or why it targeted the Weizmann Institute.
Last Thursday, the UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in almost 20 years.
Iran’s attacks have killed 24 civilians in Israel and damaged hundreds of structures, including a hospital in the southern city of Beersheba.
While most of the institute’s research is in areas with potential benefits for medicine and scientific knowledge, it also has connections with defense. It announced in October 2024 a collaboration with Israel’s largest defense firm Elbit on “bio-inspired materials for defense applications.”
A multidisciplinary institution which carries out research in fields including genetics, immunology and astrophysics, Weizmann was founded in 1934 and is considered world-class within the international scientific community.
It is Israel’s most important science research institute, with 286 research groups, 191 staff scientists and hundreds of PhD students, master’s students and postdoctoral fellows.
‘EVERYTHING IS LOST’
The Iranian missile hit the work of researchers such as Eldad Tzahor, who focuses on regenerative medicine with particular relevance to adult heart diseases. He said many samples and tissues that had been part of long-running experiments had been destroyed.
“Everything is lost,” he told Reuters TV. “I would estimate that it will take us about a year to get into a full year of research and with everything working again.”
In financial terms, the damage is estimated at $300-$500 million, according to the institute, which operates costly, complex machines, often shared between several labs or research groups.
Jacob Hanna, who runs a molecular genetics team focused on embryonic stem cell biology, told the scientific journal Nature that his lab’s ceiling had collapsed and the staircase had detached.
His students managed to save hundreds of frozen mouse and human cell lines by transferring them to back-up liquid-nitrogen tanks that Hanna had stored in the basement, Nature reported.
“I was always worried that if a war actually happens, I don’t want to lose these,” he said.
The post Israeli Scientists Scramble to Save Work After Iranian Missile Hits Labs first appeared on Algemeiner.com.