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Welcome to the new Twitter: Kanye West returns with ‘shalom’ and Elon Musk trolls the ADL
(JTA) — Elon Musk bantered with Kanye West and trolled the Anti-Defamation League this weekend, in the latest of mounting signs that he is choosing to let the platform become a free for all after acquiring it last month.
West, the rapper and designer who also goes by Ye, had been banned from Twitter last month for threatening Jews; he returned to the platform Nov. 4 and was swiftly banned again after he launched a new round of anti-Jewish invective.
“Testing Testing Seeing if my Twitter is unblocked,” West tweeted midday Sunday. Several hours later, Musk appeared to be welcoming West, punning on West’s more recent name in a response to his question: “Don’t kill what ye hate Save what ye love,” Musk tweeted.
West’s next tweet was simply “Shalom” followed by a smile emoji, a message that appeared to wink at his ongoing antisemitism controversy.
West’s return to Twitter came amid a slew of restorations of accounts that had been banned for violating Twitter’s rules. On Friday, Musk restored Donald Trump’s account, following a poll of users that narrowly concluded that the former president should be allowed to return after being suspended because his incendiary tweets helped spur the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (Trump for his part was blase about his restoration, saying he preferred Truth Social, his own social media platform.)
Musk also restored the accounts of the Babylon Bee, a satire site, and Jordan Peterson, a conservative commentator. Both had been suspended over tweets targeting trans people and had declined to remove the tweets that Twitter said violated its policies on hateful content.
Other than with Trump, it was not clear what process Musk followed, if any, to guide his decision making — a dynamic that is at odds with what the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said he had been promised when he and others met with Musk on Nov. 1 to urge him to combat hate on the platform.
“He committed not to replatform anyone, regardless of stature, until he installed a transparent, clear process that took into consideration the views of civil society,” Greenblatt said in a statement Sunday night. He called the poll that preceded Trump’s reinstatement “dangerous” and said, “It forces us to wonder whether he is serious about safeguarding the platform from hate, harassment and disinformation.”
The statement was an extended version of comments that Greenblatt had tweeted on Saturday night — and elicited a flip public response from Musk as a result.
“Hey stop defaming me!” Musk wrote, in a message widely interpreted as mocking the civil rights organization that has sought to play a leading role in pressing for a hate-free Twitter.
In the immediate wake of the Nov. 1 meeting, Greenblatt had expressed optimism about Musk’s commitment to ridding Twitter of hate speech. But as Musk instituted changes, firing or encouraging to quit hundreds of staffers, including the executives responsible for ensuring that the platform is free of hate, hateful language and harassment spiked on the site. The coalition Greenblatt initiated, Stop Hate For Profit, called on advertisers to quit Twitter until Musk makes changes.
A review of Musk’s more recent tweets suggested he was relishing the free for all. He mocked his critics, saying they were driving eyes to Twitter, joked that he hoped Twitter would induce a greater dopamine rush and then posted what he framed as a statement of his philosophy: “The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.”
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The post Welcome to the new Twitter: Kanye West returns with ‘shalom’ and Elon Musk trolls the ADL appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Suspect at Large in Brown University Shooting that Killed at Least Two, Injured Eight
Police vehicles stand near the site of a mass shooting reported by authorities at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S., December 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Taylor Coester
Police in Rhode Island were searching for a suspect in a shooting at Brown University in Providence in which two people died and eight were critically wounded at the Ivy League school, officials said.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley told a news conference that police were still searching for the shooter, who struck at Brown’s Barus & Holley engineering building, where exams were taking place at the time. Officials said police were looking for a male dressed in black and were scouring local video cameras in the area for footage to get a better description of the suspect.
Smiley said officials could not yet disclose details about the victims, including whether they were students. He lamented the shooting.
“We are a week and a half away from Christmas. And two people died today and another eight are in the hospital,” he said. “So please pray for those families.”
Brown is on College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island‘s state capital. The university has hundreds of buildings, including lecture halls, laboratories and dormitories.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had been briefed on the situation, which he called “terrible.”
“All we can do right now is pray for the victims and for those that were very badly hurt.”
Compared to many countries, mass shootings in schools, workplaces, and places of worship are more common in the US, which has some of the most permissive gun laws in the developed world. The Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shootings as any incident in which four or more victims have been shot, has counted 389 of them this year in the US.
Last year the US had more than 500 mass shootings, according to the archive.
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Rights Groups Condemn Re-Arrest of Nobel Laureate Mohammadi in Iran
Taghi Ramahi, husband of Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, poses with an undated photo of himself and his wife, during an interview at his home in Paris, France, October 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
International human rights groups have condemned the re-arrest of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi in Iran, with the Nobel committee calling on Iranian authorities to immediately clarify her whereabouts.
Mohammadi’s French lawyer, Chirine Ardakani, said on X that the human rights activist was arrested on Friday after denouncing the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi at his memorial ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Mashhad prosecutor Hasan Hematifar told reporters on Saturday that Mohammadi was among 39 people arrested after the ceremony.
Hematifar said she and Alikordi’s brother had made provocative remarks at the event and encouraged those present “to chant ‘norm‑breaking’ slogans” and disturb the peace, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
The prosecutor said Mashhad’s chief of police and another officer received knife wounds when trying to manage the scene.
CALLS FOR RELEASE
The Norwegian Nobel Committee called on Iranian authorities “to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions.”
The European Union also called for Mohammadi’s release. “The EU urges Iranian authorities to release Ms Mohammadi, taking also into account her fragile health condition, as well as all those unjustly arrested in the exercise of their freedom of expression,” an EU spokesperson said on Saturday.
A video purportedly showing Mohammadi, 53, without the mandatory veil, standing on a car with a microphone and chanting “Long Live Iran” in front of a crowd, has gone viral on social media.
Ardakani said Mohammadi was beaten before her arrest.
Reporters Without Borders said four journalists and other participants were also arrested at the memorial for human rights lawyer Alikordi, who was found dead in his office on December 5.
Authorities gave the cause of his death as a heart attack, but rights groups have called for an investigation into his death.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said the crowd also chanted “death to the dictator,” a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as: “We fight, we die, we accept no humiliation.”
Mohammadi, who received the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, has spent more than 10 years of her life in prison, most recently from November 2021 when she was charged with “propaganda against the state,” “acting against national security,” and membership of “illegal organizations.”
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, said on Saturday that the opposition’s campaign in Venezuela was akin to that taking place in Iran.
“In Oslo this week, the world honored the power of conscience. I said to the ‘citizens of the world’ that our struggle is a long march toward freedom. That march is not Venezuelan alone. It is Iranian, it is universal,” she said on X on Saturday.
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Pete Hegseth Pledges Retribution After Islamist Gunmen in Syria Kills 2 US Soldiers and Civilian, Injuring 3
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on US President Donald Trump’s budget request for the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
i24 News – Two US Army soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in an Islamic State attack on Saturday in Palmyra, Syria, where they were supporting counterterrorism operations, the Pentagon said.
Three others were wounded, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the attacker was killed by partner forces.
The Syrian Interior Ministry said that shooter in the deadly attack in Palmyra was a “member of the Syrian security forces who was influence by extremist ideology.”
President Donald Trump posted that “We mourn the loss of three Great American Patriots in Syria, two soldiers, and one Civilian Interpreter. Likewise, we pray for the three injured soldiers who, it has just been confirmed, are doing well.”
“This was an ISIS attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them. The President of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is extremely angry and disturbed by this attack. There will be very serious retaliation. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”