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Elon Musk to join Ben Shapiro and other Jewish men for live chat on antisemitism and free speech

(JTA) — Leaning into his latest controversies, Elon Musk is planning to join a bevy of Jewish men for a live chat on Thursday.
The conversation will focus on “X, anti-Semitism, and the future of free speech,” according to conservative pundit and social media personality Ben Shapiro, who announced Wednesday that Musk would join him on his “Daily Wire” podcast.
Also participating in the conversation, Shapiro said, are Rabbi Ari Lamm, an Orthodox scholar and podcaster; former Israeli politician and Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky; an unnamed representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an antisemitism watchdog; attorney and political commentator Alan Dershowitz; Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chair of the European Jewish Association; Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the author and onetime Republican congressional candidate; Rabbi Manis Friedman, a Chabad rabbi with a popular YouTube channel; former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin; and Asher Gold, and Israel-based publicist.
“And a Hava Nagila sing-off!” Musk tweeted as he shared Shapiro’s announcement.
The lineup drew applause from Shapiro’s fans on X. “This is gonna be awesome!” Libs of TikTok, a right-wing account operated by an Orthodox Jewish woman, posted.
It also elicited questions about why no women or progressives had been invited to the conversation. No non-Orthodox rabbis were on the list, either.
“Not 1 progressive voice. Not that I agree with them, but talking free speech w/o including them betrays the not-so-hidden agenda,” Andres Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, tweeted. “And why not invite Greenblatt? I hope the great @AriLamm can be the voice of reason & moderation here.”
Spokoiny was referring to Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, which musk has attacked in a series of posts this month. Musk drew allegations of antisemitism after he threatened to sue the ADL, the antisemitism watchdog, for promoting an ad boycott that he said was causing massive financial loss to his business. The group had called for the boycott after Musk acquired the company and removed guardrails against hate speech. Amid his campaign against the nonprofit, Musk interacted with white supremacist accounts criticizing the ADL.
Greenblatt told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency earlier this month that he continued to view Musk as a “great innovator” who was unfortunately engaging with antisemites on the platform that he owns and renamed from Twitter.
More than 120 Jewish activists, largely on the left and center, this week called on advertisers and app stores to drop X over the hate speech that has spiked on the platform since Musk acquired it.
Musk himself has insisted that he is “pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind,” and X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, recently posted a company statement rejecting antisemitism. Last week, Musk hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a live chat, during which Netanyahu praised his stated commitment to fighting antisemitism and encouraged him to continue fighting anti-Jewish bigotry.
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The post Elon Musk to join Ben Shapiro and other Jewish men for live chat on antisemitism and free speech appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Boston University Rejects Proposal to Divest From Israel

College students in the Boston, Massachusetts area hold dueling demonstrations amid Israel’s war with Hamas in April 2024. Photo: Vincent Ricci via Reuters Connect
Boston University has rejected the group Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) call for its endowment to be divested of holdings in companies which sell armaments to the Israeli military, becoming the latest higher education institution to refuse this key tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
“The endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate; nevertheless, I will continue to seek ways that members of our community can engage with each other on political issues of our day including the conflict in the Middle East,” university president Melissa Gilliam said on Tuesday in a statement which reported the will of the board of trustees. “Our traditions of free speech and academic freedom are critical to who we are as an institution, and so is our tradition of finding common ground to engage difficult topics while respecting the dignity of every individual.”
Gilliam’s announcement comes amid SJP’s push to hold a student government administered referendum on divestment, a policy goal the group has pursued since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Its hopes were dashed on Tuesday when what SJP described as “technical difficulties” caused the referendum to be postponed indefinitely. However, SJP hinted that the delay may have been caused by its failing to draw a “representative sample of BU’s undergraduate population” to the polls.
SJP’s relationship with the university is poor, according to The Daily Free Press, Boston University’s official campus newspaper. In November, the Student and Activities Office issued the group a “formal warning” following multiple violations of policies on peaceful assembly. SJP, the Free Press said, occupied an area of the Center for Computing and Data Sciences for two days and tacked anti-Zionist propaganda — which included accusations that Boston University profits from “death” — on school property inside the building despite being forewarned that doing so is verboten. Following the disciplinary action, SJP accused the university of being “discriminatory towards SJP and our events.”
American universities have largely rejected demands to divest from Israel and entities at all linked to the Jewish state, delivering a succession of blows to the pro-Hamas protest movement that students and faculty have pushed with dozens of illegal demonstrations aimed at coercing officials into enacting the policy.
Trinity College turned away BDS advocates in November, citing its “fiduciary responsibilities” and “primary objective of maintaining the endowment’s intergeneration equity.” It also noted that acceding to demands for divestment for the sake of “utilizing the endowment to exert political influence” would injure the college financially, stressing that doing so would “compromise our access to fund managers, in turn undermining the board’s ability to perform its fiduciary obligation.”
The University of Minnesota in August pointed to the same reason for spurning divestment while stressing the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes its campus community. It coupled its pronouncement with a new investment policy, a so-called “position of neutrality” which, it says, will be a guardrail protecting university business from the caprices of political opinion.
Colleges and universities will lose tens of billions of dollars collectively from their endowments if they capitulate to demands to divest from Israel, according to a report published in September by JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report presented the potential financial impact of universities adopting the BDS movement, which is widely condemned for being antisemitic.
The losses estimated by JLens are catastrophic. Adopting BDS, it said, would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.
“This groundbreaking report approached the morally problematic BDS movement from an entirely new direction — its negative impact on portfolio returns,” New York University adjunct professor Michael Lustig said in a statement extolling the report. “JLens has done a great job in quantifying the financial effects of implementing the suggestions of this pernicious movement, and importantly, they ‘show their work’ by providing full transparency into their methodology, and properly caveat the points where assumptions must necessarily be made. This report will prove to be an important tool in helping to fight noxious BDS advocacy.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Boston University Rejects Proposal to Divest From Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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American Jews Believe Republicans Handling Antisemitism Better Than Democrats, Poll Finds

US Nominee for Ambassador to the United Nations Elise Stefanik addressing the Israeli parliament on May 24, 2024. Photo: Office of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.
American Jews believe the Republican Party is handling antisemitism better than the Democratic Party, according to a new poll conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
The poll, which collected responses between Oct. 8 and Nov. 29 but was released on Wednesday, revealed that Jewish Americans hold widespread skepticism about how US politicians are handling the ongoing surge in antisemitism across the country.
Among respondents, only 39 percent indicated support for how the Democratic Party “is responding to antisemitism in the United States.” In comparison, 59 percent responded that they were “dissatisfied” with how the Democrats are handling the problem.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party performed better among Jewish American respondents, with 45 percent indicating “approval” and 54 percent indicating “disapproval” with how the GOP has handled antisemitism
Democrats have found themselves embroiled in controversy over their party’s handling of antisemitism following the Hamas-led massacres across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Democratic leaders were harshly criticized for adopting what they deemed a soft approach to combating the rising tide of anti-Jewish hate within left-wing circles. High-profile progressive Democratic lawmakers such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Summer Lee (D-PA), have spent the past year launching a barrage of insults against Israel, oftentimes accusing the Jewish state of committing a “genocide” against Palestinians as retribution for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
In November, 17 Democratic senators voted to implement a partial arms embargo against Israel, incensing many Jewish American organizations and pro-Israel supporters who view deep hostility and the application of double standards to the world’s lone Jewish state as an indicator of antisemitism.
Republicans in the US Congress have generally adopted a more hardline stance against antisemitism, launching congressional investigations against anti-Jewish bigotry on college campuses and presenting state-level legislation to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
High-profile Republican politicians such as Elise Stefanik, the nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations, have also been elevated into powerful positions within the new Trump administration in part for their strident pro-Israel positions. US President Donald Trump, a Republican, recently passed an executive order to crack down on antisemitism at universities and punish the harassment of Jewish students, including by deporting non-Americans on campuses who promote terrorism and hatred against Jews.
However, conservatives have struggled with surging antisemitism within their own ranks in the 16 months following the Oct. 7 atrocities. Popular conservative podcasters Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have circulated antisemitic content to millions of their subscribers, oftentimes outright accusing Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians and promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Jewish people. Both Carlson and Owens have indicated support for the “Christian Nationalist” movement — a form of religious nationalism which seeks to enshrine Christianity’s dominance in American cultural life. According to the AJC poll, 79 percent of American Jews believe Christian Nationalism is an “antisemitic threat.”
An almost identical number of American Jews perceive left-wing and right-wing political extremism as an “antisemitic threat.” According to the poll, 78 percent believe that the “extreme political left” and 79 percent believe that the “extreme political right” are threats to the Jewish community.
The poll also found that 54 percent of American Jews believe antisemitism is a “very serious problem,” a sharp increase from previous years, and another 39 percent said it was “somewhat of a problem.”
More than half, 56 percent, of Jews have also avoided publicly identifying as Jews to shield themselves from dealing with antisemitism, an 18-point increase from 2022.
“Antisemitism has reached a tipping point in America, threatening the freedoms of American Jews and casting an ominous shadow across our society,” AJC CEO Ted Deutch said in a statement. “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for leaders across the US. We must act now to protect Jews — and America — from rising antisemitism. That one-third of American Jews have been the target of antisemitism in the past year should raise red flags for every American and our leaders.”
The survey also revealed that there is still widespread support for Israel among the Jewish community in the United States. According to AJC, 81 percent of American Jews stated that they cared about Israel because it was “important.” The poll also indicated rising pro-Israel sentiment among younger generations, with 40 percent of those aged 18 to 29 claiming Israel was “very important” to them, an 11-point surge from the previous year.
The post American Jews Believe Republicans Handling Antisemitism Better Than Democrats, Poll Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Irish Leftist, Nationalist Party to Boycott St. Patrick’s Day Events at White House Over Trump’s Gaza Plan

Anti-Israel demonstrators stand outside the Israeli embassy after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Molly Darlington
A prominent left-wing and nationalist political party in Ireland has confirmed that it will not attend St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Washinton, DC next month due to “incompatible values” with US President Donald Trump following the announcement of his plan to “take over” Gaza and rebuild it into an economic hub.
Claire Hanna — leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the once dominant party of Irish nationalism in Northern Ireland — announced the decision as a stance against Trump’s proposal for the Palestinian enclave, where Israel and the terrorist group Hamas have been fighting for 16 months.
“The SDLP’s values are incompatible with what we are seeing and hearing, and we won’t be endorsing it on St Patrick’s Day,” Hanna, a member of the British parliament, said in a statement on Tuesday. “We understand the importance of the relationship between the US and this island [Ireland], but the politics of the current US administration mean it is essential that we stand up for what is right, and when it comes to Gaza, what is wrong.”
Last year, Hanna’s predecessor also refused to attend the White House festivities as a protest against US support for Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
At the time, then-party leader Colum Eastwood accused Washington of having an “atrocious” response to the Middle Eastern conflict — which began with Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — and refused to celebrate “while the civilian population in Gaza lives in constant fear of eradication.”
In line with her predecessor’s stance, Hanna justified this week’s decision by saying the SDLP “could not endorse the US government while it armed and supported the bombardment of Gaza.”
“We hope the fragile ceasefire will deliver a lasting peace and the return of hostages to their families, but the rhetoric of Donald Trump, around the displacement and ethnic cleansing of millions of people, is absolutely beyond the pale,” she said. “We can’t in good conscience attend parties hosted in that context.”
The SDLP also posted on social media announcing its decision, writing, “Ireland has a proud history of solidarity with Palestine.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war in Gaza when they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during their Oct. 7 onslaught. After 16 months of fighting, both sides agreed to a ceasefire and hostage-release deal last month, with the first phase set to last six weeks.
Trump last week proposed resettling Gaza’s Palestinians in Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab countries while the US “takes over” the coastal enclave and builds it up into a “Riviera of the Middle East.” His comments have been met with immense backlash, with some observers accusing him of supporting an ethnic cleansing plan. However, proponents of the proposal argue that it could offer Palestinians a better future and would mitigate the threat posed by Hamas.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister, Michelle O’Neill, and Deputy First Minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, have yet to announce whether they will attend St Patrick’s Day events in Washington next month.
Traditionally, political leaders from Ireland take part in celebrations at the White House each March, when the Irish premier usually presents a bowl of shamrock to the US President.
Even with its decision, Hanna said the SDLP will maintain relationships with US officials, “particularly with those trying to resist and combat the overreach of the current administration.”
Since the aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities, Ireland has been a fierce critic of the Jewish state.
Last month, Irish President Michael D. Higgins used his platform speaking at a Holocaust commemoration to launch a tirade against Israel’s military campaign targeting Hamas terrorists, seemingly drawing parallels between Israel’s war in Gaza and the Nazis’ genocide of Jews.
Amid a downward spiral in relations between the two countries, Ireland joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
In December, Israel closed its embassy in Dublin, accusing the Irish government of undermining Israel at international forums and promoting “extreme anti-Israel policies.”
Irish leaders have previously called on the EU to “review its trade relations” with Israel after the Israeli parliament passed a law banning UNRWA activities in the country due to its ties to Hamas.
Last year, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, claiming the move was accelerated by the Israel-Hamas war and would help foster a two-state solution, which Israeli officials described as a “reward for terrorism.”
The post Irish Leftist, Nationalist Party to Boycott St. Patrick’s Day Events at White House Over Trump’s Gaza Plan first appeared on Algemeiner.com.