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Elon Musk expresses regret for endorsing antisemitic post but swears at advertisers boycotting X over it
(JTA) — Elon Musk called his recent endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory “foolish” and said he was “sorry for that post” on X, the social media platform he owns and renamed from Twitter.
But speaking at the New York Times Dealbook Summit on Wednesday, Musk also struck back, in expletive-laden language, at the advertisers who have fled the platform over his post.
And the mogul, fresh off a trip to Israel where he toured a community ravaged by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, also suggested that some Jewish organizations have funded Hamas-affilated groups under what he said was the guise of “perception of persecution.”
Musk’s comments came during an hour-long interview with Jewish New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin at the business conference. Musk reserved his biggest vitriol for advertisers including Disney that have suspended their spending on X after Musk endorsed another user’s articulation of the antisemitic “Great Replacement” theory.
“If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go f— yourself,” Musk said.
“Hey Bob, if you’re here in the audience, sorry, that’s how I feel,” he added, in an apparent reference to Disney CEO Bob Iger. Earlier in the day, Iger said Disney’s decision to leave X came after the company decided the site was “not something for us” because Musk took “the position he took, in quite a public manner.”
Elsewhere during the interview, Musk expressed regret for sending his Nov. 15 tweet in which he called a user’s antisemitic post “the actual truth.”
“I should have, in retrospect, not replied to that particular person and I should have written in greater length as to what I meant,” Musk told Sorkin.
“I mean, look, I’m sorry for that post. It was foolish of me,” he added. “Of the 30,000 it might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done. And I’ve tried my best to clarify six ways from Sunday, but you know at least I think it’ll be obvious that in fact far from being antisemitic, I’m in fact philosemitic.”
The user Musk responded to had written, in an echo of the Great Replacement theory, “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest s— now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities [they] support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.”
Musk attracted widespread criticism and condemnation for his reply to the tweet, which came amid a global rise in antisemitism in the wake of Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. But on Wednesday he continued to defend the sentiments he said he meant to express in the post, saying his point had been that Jews fund groups that “essentially promote any persecuted group or any group with the perception of persecution” and claiming without evidence, “This includes radical Islamic groups.”
Musk did not offer any specifics about the groups he was referring to or the nature of their support for radical Islamic groups.
Since Oct. 7, some far-left Jewish groups have allied themselves with pro-Palestinian activists in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which would leave Hamas in power; those groups have drawn criticism from Jews and others who argue they are working against Jewish interests.
(Musk has also feuded with one prominent Jewish group, the Anti-Defamation League civil rights watchdog, whose CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has both condemned and praised Musk and was in the summit’s audience.)
“The Jewish people have been persecuted for thousands of years. There is a natural affinity, therefore, for persecuted groups,” Musk said. “Everyone here has seen the massive demonstrations for Hamas in every major city in the West. That should be jarring. Well, a number of those organizations receive funding from prominent people in Jewish communities.”
Musk continued, “It’s unwise to fund organizations, to support groups that want your annihilation.” He then prompted applause by adding, “Let’s say you fund a group and that group supports Hamas, who wants you to die. Perhaps you should not fund them.”
Discussing his recent tour of Israeli sites that were attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, Musk said his trip had been planned in advance of his controversial tweet and was “not an apology tour.” He showed off a dogtag he wore around his neck reading “Bring Them Home” that he said had been given to him by a parent of one of the hostages. (Rachel Goldberg, whose 23-year-old son Hersh Goldberg-Polin is a hostage, gave Musk the necklace during their meeting in Israel.)
“I said that I would wear it as long as there is a hostage still remaining. And I am,” Musk said.
Musk’s relationship with Jews was a hot topic at the summit. In addition to Iger, Vice President Kamala Harris was also asked about his antisemitic tweet, responding, “I have nothing to say.” (The White House has condemned Musk for the tweet, which it called an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.”)
And Israeli President Isaac Herzog addressed Musk’s recent visit, saying he “appreciated” the mogul’s appearance but stopping short of saying he believed Musk would effectively fight antisemitism on X.
Musk also praised the X feature known as Community Notes, user-generated information meant to add context to tweets. Community Notes has displayed antisemitic misinformation in the past.
Later in his talk, Musk suggested that those concerned about antisemitism on X should widen their lens. “In terms of antisemitic content, TikTok is rife with that,” he said.
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The post Elon Musk expresses regret for endorsing antisemitic post but swears at advertisers boycotting X over it appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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