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Netanyahu to meet with Elon Musk amid tech mogul’s mounting attacks on the ADL
(JTA) – He won’t be heading to the White House, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed he will meet with Elon Musk when he travels to the United States next week.
The meeting with Musk on Monday in San Francisco comes as the tech billionaire and social media mogul faces mounting criticism for his continued attacks on the Anti-Defamation League.
The visit is part of a key diplomatic trip to the U.S. for Netanyahu, who is also set to address the United Nations General Assembly next week and have a long-awaited meeting with President Joe Biden on the sidelines.
Other tech leaders will also join Netanyahu’s meeting with Musk, part of a bid to bolster Israel’s start-up sector, according to the Washington Post. The choice to meet Musk will be closely scrutinized because of Musk’s string of run-ins with the ADL on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that Musk owns. Most recently, Musk issued a string of posts threatening to sue the ADL, engaging with white supremacists and blaming the prominent American Jewish civil rights group for stoking antisemitism.
In the past, the ADL has taken Musk to task for removing the platform’s guardrails against hate speech and for tweeting that liberal Jewish megadonor George Soros, a frequent target of antisemitism, “hates humanity.” Musk has said the group should be called a “defamation league,” and in recent days, has shared posts decrying “ADL-backed media” and accusing the ADL of a “shakedown” of social media platforms. Musk has said he blames an ad boycott led by the ADL for the social network’s financial troubles after he purchased it last year.
The meeting won’t be the first time Netanyahu has spoken with Musk. In June, the prime minister chatted with Musk by phone shortly after Musk’s posts about Soros. Netanyahu said at the time that the two discussed how Israel can expand its involvement in the artificial intelligence field.
Figures in Netanyahu’s coalition have both criticized Musk and defended him from antisemitism charges. In May, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Musk’s Soros comments had crossed the line, but the foreign minister later disavowed that condemnation. Soon afterward, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli called Musk “an amazing entrepreneur and a role model” and denied that his criticism of Soros was antisemitic. Separately, Israel’s health Ministry criticized comments Musk had made about the COVID-19 vaccine as “fake news.”
Musk recently tweeted that he is “pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind.” Shortly after his string of posts lambasting the ADL, X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted and then revised a statement outlining the company’s commitment to antisemitism. The company also put out a statement accusing the ADL of “consistently misrepresent[ing] our progress” in the area of “combating antisemitism on X.”
Yaccarino further exchanged text messages with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who recently told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Musk was spreading “age-old tropes” by blaming a prominent Jewish organization for antisemitism.
Even before his meeting with Musk was confirmed, Netanyahu’s trip to the United States was attracting attention because of the anticipated meeting with Biden, which Netanyahu has sought since he returned to office at the end of last year. Biden has so far rebuffed the prime minister due to concern about far-right elements in Netanyahu’s coalition as well as his effort to weaken the Israeli court system.
That judicial overhaul, which has led to widespread civil strife in Israel, has led a group of Israelis and progressive Jews in the Bay Area to announce a protest of Netanyahu’s visit next week. Protest organizers said they now plan to protest the Musk meeting as well.
“It’s deeply disturbing that Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the world’s only Jewish state, is flying across America to seek the counsel and support from a notorious enabler of anti-Jewish hate speech,” Offir Gutelzon, a tech veteran and co-founder of the Israeli expatriate protest movement UnXeptable, told the Washington Post.
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The post Netanyahu to meet with Elon Musk amid tech mogul’s mounting attacks on the ADL appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.