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Elon Musk takes aim at the Anti-Defamation League after its CEO says his tweets ‘will embolden extremists’
(JTA) — Hours after tweeting that George Soros “hates humanity,” Elon Musk bashed the Anti-Defamation League, appearing to draw praise from a series of white supremacist accounts on Twitter, which he owns.
On Tuesday afternoon, Musk tweeted, “ADL should just drop the ‘A.’” The tweet implied that the group, which is the most prominent antisemitism watchdog in the country, should instead be named the “Defamation League.”
Musk’s tweet came after ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt criticized Musk’s remarks about Soros, marking the latest chapter in the roller-coaster relationship between the ADL and the Twitter CEO. When Musk was poised to buy the social media platform, Greenblatt praised him. But in the months since that acquisition, the ADL has been increasingly critical of Musk, accusing him of taking a lax attitude toward policing hate speech.
When asked for a response, the ADL pointed to Greenblatt’s statement from earlier in the day, in which he took Musk to task for his Soros remarks, including a tweet in which Musk compared the progressive megadonor and Holocaust survivor to a comic book villain.
Greenblatt tweeted that Musk’s comments “will embolden extremists who already contrive anti-Jewish conspiracies and have tried to attack Soros and Jewish communities as a result.” Another Jewish organizational executive, American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch, echoed that criticism, tweeting, “The lie that Jews want to destroy civilization has led to the persecution of Jewish people for centuries. Musk should know better.” (The shooter in the Pittsburgh synagogue attack in 2018 referenced a conspiracy theory about Soros.)
The current spat is a marked difference from Greenblatt’s attitude last October, when he praised Musk as “an amazing entrepreneur and extraordinary innovator,” and as “the Henry Ford of our time.” Even though he later acknowledged that “the Henry Ford reference was wrong,” given that Ford was perhaps the most notorious antisemite in American history, Greenblatt added, “We want to be cautiously optimistic about how Musk will run the platform because he successfully has innovated other industries and tackled incredibly complex problems.”
Since then, the ADL has taken a more negative view. Less than a month after the Henry Ford analogy, the ADL called for an ad boycott of Twitter due to a spike in antisemitism on the site. In the months that have followed, the ADL has criticized Twitter for removing hate speech guardrails by dissolving an advisory body focused on “Trust and Safety” and by allowing antisemites who had been banned to return to the platform.
The Musk-ADL dynamic parallels the deteriorating relationship the ADL had with another social media giant, Facebook. Several years ago, the ADL worked with Facebook to curb hate speech, but later led a high-profile ad boycott of the platform when it judged that Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, were not committed to preventing bigotry on the site.
And Musk is not the only public figure who has targeted the ADL amid broader criticism of the left. Recently-fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson repeatedly criticized the group on his show after the ADL called on him to be ousted when he promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory on his show. In December, Carlson claimed that the ADL, one of the country’s largest Jewish organizations, “extorted” companies for money. He said that Greenblatt leverages the ADL’s reputation for “moral authority and cash,” and threatens, “Send me money or I’ll call you names.”
Musk’s tweet about the ADL appears to have unleashed yet more antisemitism on Twitter. In the hours after Musk posted the tweet, he garnered praise from a string of accounts posting antisemitic content, which shared his tweet with their own commentary.
An account called “White Power Ranger” tweeted, “The ADL is a jewish supremacist foreign lobby/spy group.” Another with an avatar of Pepe the Frog, a cartoon that has become a symbol of the alt-right, tweeted a cartoon of a traditional fascist symbol along with the words, “We’re back.” Another posted a GIF of Adolf Hitler smiling alongside the message, “Based.”
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The post Elon Musk takes aim at the Anti-Defamation League after its CEO says his tweets ‘will embolden extremists’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Nearly 90% of Turkish Opinion Columns Favor Hamas, Study Shows
Pro-Hamas demonstrators in Istanbul, Turkey, carry a banner calling for Israel’s elimination. Photo: Reuters/Dilara Senkaya
About 90 percent of opinion articles published in two of Turkey’s leading media outlets portray the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in a positive or neutral light, according to a new study, reflecting Ankara’s increasingly hostile stance toward Israel.
Earlier this week, the Israel-based Jewish People Policy Institute released a report examining roughly 15,000 opinion columns in the widely read Turkish newspapers Sabah and Hürriyet, revealing that Hamas is often depicted positively through a “resistance movement” narrative portraying its members as “martyrs.”
For example, Turkish journalist Abdulkadir Selvi, writing in Hürriyet, described the assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as “a holy martyr not only of Palestine but of Islam as a whole” who “fought for peace,” while portraying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the new Hitler.”
JPPI also found that most articles in these two newspapers took a neutral stance on the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, offering almost no clear condemnation of the attacks and failing to acknowledge the group’s targeting of civilians.
Some journalists even went so far as to praise the violence as serving the Palestinian cause, the study noted.
In one striking example, Hürriyet published an article just one day after the attack, lauding the “resistance fighters” who carried out a “mythic” assault on the “Zionist occupying regime” and celebrating the killings.
In other cases, some journalists went as far as to portray Hamas as treating the Israeli hostages it kidnapped “kindly,” denying that the terrorist group had tortured and sexually abused former captives despite clear evidence.
“There was not the slightest indication that the Israelis released by the Palestinian resistance had been tortured,” Turkish journalist Hilal Kaplan wrote in Sabah, denying claims that the hostages had suffered brutal abuse.
“They all looked exactly the same physically as they did on Oct. 6, 2023, more than a year later,” he continued.
Prof. Yedidia Stern, president of JPPI, described the study’s findings as “deeply troubling,” urging Israeli officials not to overlook the Turkish media’s positive portrayal of Hamas and denial of its abuses.
“We must not normalize incitement and antisemitism anywhere in the world – certainly not when it comes from countries with which Israel maintains diplomatic relations,” Stern said in a statement.
According to the study, nearly half of the columns expressed a positive view of Hamas, while approximately 40 percent took a neutral position.
The analysis also found that around 40 percent of opinion columns mentioning Jews or Judaism contained antisemitic elements, with some invoking “Jewish capital” to suggest global power, while others compared Zionism to Nazism or depicted Jews as immune from international criticism.
For instance, two weeks after the Oct. 7 atrocities, Turkish journalist Nedim Şener wrote in Hürriyet that global Jewish capital and control over media and international institutions had brought the United States and Europe “to their knees,” allowing Israel to carry out a “genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
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ADL appoints former head of embattled Gaza aid foundation to its board
The Anti-Defamation League named Rev. Johnnie Moore, who led the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to its board of directors last week.
Moore became the public face of the foundation over the summer as it faced blame for hundreds of Palestinian civilians being killed while attempting to access aid at distribution centers that critics said were risky and inefficient.
But the ADL described the foundation, which was created with support from the U.S. and Israeli governments, as a “historic effort to provide nearly 200 million meals for free to the people of Gaza,” in a press release.
The ADL’s leadership has become more protective of Israel in recent years as it has shifted away from its historic work on civil rights issues unrelated to antisemitism. That change included a 2017 reworking of its governance structure, which had been run by a committee of several hundred lay leaders, to a more traditional nonprofit board.
The United Nations reported in August that 859 Palestinians had been killed near the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, mostly by the Israeli military. Doctors Without Borders said that the centers had “morphed into a laboratory of cruelty” with children being shot and civilians crushed in stampedes.
Moore’s role involved defending the organization. He blamed Hamas and the United Nations for causing mass starvation in Gaza and presented the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as the best means of distributing food to civilians without allowing it to be diverted to militants.
“Hamas has been trying to use the aid situation to advance their ceasefire position,” Moore said during a July presentation to the American Jewish Congress.
The foundation shut down in December.
An evangelical leader and former campaign adviser to President Donald Trump’s with no background in international aid prior to his work with the foundation in Gaza, Moore brings a Christian perspective to the ADL’s board at a time when evangelicals are increasingly divided over Israel and antisemitism. “As a Christian, I consider it a responsibility to stand alongside ADL in this critical moment for the Jewish community and for our nation,” he said in the statement announcing his appointment.
He was appointed alongside Stacie Hartman, an attorney and lay leader based in Chicago, and Matthew Segal, a media entrepreneur who former President Joe Biden named to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. They join a mix of philanthropists and business leaders, including Jonathan Neman, the CEO of salad chain Sweetgreen, and Max Neuberger, the publisher of Jewish Insider.
The post ADL appoints former head of embattled Gaza aid foundation to its board appeared first on The Forward.
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Man Charged With Hate Crime for Car Ramming at Chabad Headquarters in Brooklyn
Police control the scene after a car repeatedly slammed into Chabad World Headquarters in Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The driver was taken into custody. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Police in New York City charged a man on Thursday with a hate crime and other charges after he allegedly rammed his car repeatedly into Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn.
The suspect, 36-year-old Dan Sohail, has been charged with attempted assault as a hate crime, reckless endangerment as a hate crime, criminal mischief as a hate crime, and aggravated harassment as a hate crime, New York City Police Department (NYPD) Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny announced at a press conference on Thursday.
“The hate crime right now is that he basically attacked a Jewish institution,” Kenny explained. “This is a synagogue, it was clearly marked as a synagogue, he knew it was a synagogue because he had attended there previously.”
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement is an influential force in Orthodox Judaism that operates around the world. The iconic 770 Eastern Parkway building in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn became the world headquarters of the Hassidic movement in 1940.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is leading the investigation into the car ramming.
Sohail is a resident of New Jersey and has no criminal history in New York City, Kenny said. The vehicle he allegedly used on Wednesday night was registered under his name and, earlier this month, Sohail attended an event at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters.
“We believe that he was in Brooklyn last night to continue this attempt to connect with the Lubavitch Jewish community,” Kenny said. Sohail was due in court on Friday.
Footage from the incident showed Sohail drive his vehicle multiple times into the rear door of the 770 Eastern Parkway building in Crown Heights, according to Kenny, who added that the suspect stepped out of his vehicle, removed several blockades from his path, and cleared snow away from a sidewalk before ramming into the building.
Later, when talking to police, Sohail claimed his foot slipped and that he lost control of the car because he was wearing “clunky boots,” Kenny said. No injuries were reported and the damaged synagogue door is currently being repaired, according to Yaacov Behrman, head of public relations at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters.
“It is clear the incident was intentional,” Behrman added. “The attacker removed the metal bollards that typically block the ramp and protect the entrance shortly before driving into the building. The bollards have since been restored.”
The car ramming took place the same day as the 75th anniversary of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson being chosen as the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, said in a statement on Thursday night that the incident “underscores a painful and undeniable reality: acts of hate, intimidation, violence, and antisemitic aggression are no longer isolated incidents or abstract threats.”
“Condemnation alone is insufficient. Real deterrence requires prompt, decisive action by the justice system — through swift prosecution and meaningful consequences — to discourage further incidents and ensure public safety,” he said. “As this incident occurred while the anniversary of the beginning of the Rebbe’s leadership was being observed worldwide, we reaffirm our faith that the world is meant to be refined — not ruled by fear or force, but cultivated as a place of moral clarity, responsibility, and goodness. We remain committed to that vision, even in the face of events such as this.”
The ramming incident occurred amid an alarming surge in antisemitic hate crimes across New York City.