RSS
Why ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt is praising Elon Musk as advertisers flee X over antisemitism

(JTA) – Advertisers have been dropping off the social network X this week after its owner, Elon Musk, called an antisemitic post “the actual truth.”
It was the exact pressure tactic that the Anti-Defamation League had recommended almost exactly a year earlier to fight hate on the platform, then known as Twitter. And given the Jewish civil rights group’s CEO’s response to Musk’s post endorsing the antisemitic “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, one might have expected it to follow suit.
“It is indisputably dangerous to use one’s influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on the platform.
Yet even as companies including IBM, Apple and Disney are pulling their ad dollars in protest, the ADL is continuing to buy ads on X — and Greenblatt has shifted to praising Musk, this time for what he says is a meaningful effort to fight antisemitism.
Musk had written another post, saying that two phrases common to pro-Palestinian protests — “decolonization,” and “from the river to the sea” — “necessarily imply genocide.” He added that users would be suspended if they posted “clear calls for extreme violence.”
“This is an important and welcome move by @elonmusk,” Greenblatt responded on X. “I appreciate this leadership in fighting hate.”
Musk has been sparring publicly with the ADL for months, at one point blaming it for rising antisemitism and threatening to sue it for billions of dollars. Now, the latest whirlwind chapter in that saga — Greenblatt’s quick shift from condemning to praising the billionaire social media mogul — has created a whiplash moment for the Jewish world.
On Monday the State Department’s antisemitism envoy suggested that she opposed Greenblatt’s stance, while a member of one of the ADL’s advisory boards called the about-face “embarrassing.”
“The damage was done,” Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt remarked about Musk’s first tweet during a Monday briefing with Jewish media. “The endorsement of the Great Replacement theory was very harmful.”
Lipstadt added that she disapproved of what she saw as any attempt to “mitigate” Musk’s earlier tweet, without criticizing Greenblatt directly. “You can try to mitigate, but once you open the pillow, it’s like chasing the feathers,” she said.
Greenblatt told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he didn’t regret his praise for Musk. Praising people when they take what the ADL sees as the right steps, he said, is part of his job fighting antisemitism. Musk’s tweet and his own praise of it, Greenblatt told JTA, came following a private conversation between the two men in which Musk previewed his vow to suspend users who call for violence.
“I will call out Elon Musk and X, like every other platform, when they get it wrong. And I will credit Elon Musk and X and every other platform when they get it right,” Greenblatt said Monday. “One doesn’t negate the other. It was not that, ‘this happened, therefore that wasn’t bad,’ or ‘that was bad, therefore we can’t see the value in this.’ Quite the contrary.”
During their conversation, Greenblatt said, he did not press Musk for an apology for the post the billionaire wrote on Wednesday, which Greenblatt had called “indisputably dangerous.”
Musk was replying to a user who wrote, “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.”
The post was an endorsement of the Great Replacement theory, which posits that Jews are orchestrating the replacement of white populations in Western countries via the mass immigration of people of color. It was the theory cited by the attacker in the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
Musk responded, “You have said the actual truth.”
Greenblatt joined a loud chorus in condemning that post. Other Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee, harshly condemned it. Later in the same thread, Musk went after the ADL itself, saying the group “push[es] de facto anti-white racism.”
Greenblatt acknowledged the attacks on his group. “I don’t take any of that personally,” he said. Despite Musk’s public attitude about the ADL, Greenblatt called their meeting “extremely promising.”
Greenblatt noted that he believed Musk “still has work to do. He is not, if you will, in the clear.”
But, he added, “We saw a change in what he said on Friday, and that was noteworthy.” He said the ADL was buying ads on X, and in response to major firms suspending their ad spending, said companies “need to make their own decisions about where they want their brands to be placed.”
He said, “I hope that the other social media companies follow X’s leadership on this.”
His handling of Musk is not sitting well with some supporters of the ADL. Peter Fox, a member of the group’s NextGen Advisory Board in New York, wrote in the Forward that Greenblatt’s praise of Musk was “baffling and frankly embarrassing.” He added, “Aligning with someone like Musk, who repeatedly dabbles in conspiracy theories and white nationalist rhetoric, is a misstep that undermines the ADL’s credibility and core principles.”
Following Musk’s endorsement of the “Great Replacement” theory, more than 100 Jewish activists called out Musk for “spreading the kind of antisemitism that leads to massacres.”
Michelle Goldberg, a Jewish columnist for the New York Times, noted that Israel’s Diaspora minister, Amichai Chikli, also thanked Musk for denouncing the pro-Palestinian language. “It’s hard to figure out who is behaving more cynically, Musk or the Jewish leaders who are koshering him,” she wrote in a column on Monday.
Greenblatt acknowledged the criticism.
“At the end of the day, I understand that everyone might not agree with what I did,” he said. But he told JTA that he wasn’t concerned that his positions on Musk would harm the ADL’s reputation.
“The ADL has been around for 110 years. We don’t play for any particular team,” he said. “Our job is to protect the Jewish people. I don’t make the decisions I do based on how do I think this affects our, quote, ‘reputation.’ I do it based on, am I able to keep our community safe?”
Ron Kampeas contributed reporting.
—
The post Why ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt is praising Elon Musk as advertisers flee X over antisemitism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
FBI Investigating ‘Targeted Terror Attack’ in Boulder, Colorado, Director Says

FILE PHOTO: FBI Director Kash Patel testifies before the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on President Trump’s proposed budget request for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FBI Director Kash Patel said on Sunday the agency was aware of and fully investigating a targeted terror attack in Boulder, Colorado.
While he did not provide further details, Patel said in a social media post: “Our agents and local law enforcement are on the scene already, and we will share updates as more information becomes available.”
According to CBS News, which cited witnesses at the scene, a suspect attacked people with Molotov cocktails who were participating in a walk to remember the Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza.
The Boulder Police Department said it was responding to a report of an attack in the city involving several victims. It has not released further details but a press conference was expected at 4 p.m. Mountain Time (2200 GMT).
The attack comes just weeks after a Chicago-born man was arrested in the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, D.C. Someone opened fire on a group of people leaving an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group that fights antisemitism and supports Israel.
The shooting fueled polarization in the United States over the war in Gaza between supporters of Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
The post FBI Investigating ‘Targeted Terror Attack’ in Boulder, Colorado, Director Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Terrorist Responsible for Death of 21 Soldiers Eliminated

An Israeli F-35I “Adir” fighter jet. Photo: IDF
i24 News – Khalil Abd al-Nasser Mohammed Khatib, the terrorist who commanded the terrorist cell that killed 21 soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip on January 22, 2024, was killed by an Israeli airstrike, the IDF said on Sunday.
In a joint operation between the military and the Shin Bet security agency, the terrorist was spotted in a reconnaissance mission. The troops called up an aircraft to target him, and he was eliminated.
Khatib planned and took part in many other terrorist plots against Israeli soldiers.
i24NEWS’ Hebrew channel interviewed Dor Almog, the sole survivor of the mass casualty disaster, who was informed on live TV about the death of the commander responsible for the killing his brothers-in-arms.
“I was sure this day would come – I was a soldier and I know what happens at the end,” said Almog. “The IDF will do everything to bring back the abductees and to topple Hamas, to the last one man.”
The post Terrorist Responsible for Death of 21 Soldiers Eliminated first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Stanley Fischer, Former Fed Vice Chair and Bank of Israel Chief, Dies at 81

FILE PHOTO: Vice Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve System Stanley Fischer arrives to hear Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney delivering the Michel Camdessus Central Banking Lecture at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, U.S., September 18, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
Stanley Fischer, who helped shape modern economic theory during a career that included heading the Bank of Israel and serving as vice chair of the US Federal Reserve, has died at the age of 81.
The Bank of Israel said he died on Saturday night but did not give a cause of death. Fischer was born in Zambia and had dual US-Israeli citizenship.
As an academic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fischer trained many of the people who went on to be top central bankers, including former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as well as Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank president.
Fischer served as chief economist at the World Bank, and first deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund during the Asian financial crisis and was then vice chairman at Citigroup from 2002 to 2005.
During an eight-year stint as Israel’s central bank chief from 2005-2013, Fischer helped the country weather the 2008 global financial crisis with minimal economic damage, elevating Israel’s economy on the global stage, while creating a monetary policy committee to decide on interest rates like in other advanced economies.
He was vice chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2017 and served as a director at Bank Hapoalim in 2020 and 2021.
Current Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron praised Fischer’s contribution to the Bank of Israel and to advancing Israel’s economy as “truly significant.”
The soft-spoken Fischer – who played a role in Israel’s economic stabilization plan in 1985 during a period of hyperinflation – was chosen by then Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as central bank chief.
Netanyahu, now prime minister, called Fischer a “great Zionist” for leaving the United States and moving to Israel to take on the top job at Israel’s central bank.
“He was an outstanding economist. In the framework of his role as governor, he greatly contributed to the Israeli economy, especially to the return of stability during the global economic crisis,” Netanyahu said, adding that Stanley – as he was known in Israel – proudly represented Israel and its economy worldwide.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also paid tribute.
“He played a huge role in strengthening Israel’s economy, its remarkable resilience, and its strong reputation around the world,” Herzog said. “He was a world-class professional, a man of integrity, with a heart of gold. A true lover of peace.”
The post Stanley Fischer, Former Fed Vice Chair and Bank of Israel Chief, Dies at 81 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login