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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Robert Dex

Elon Musk to meet Israeli President after antisemitism row

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk will meet the Israeli President on Monday to discuss "rising antisemitism online" after he was caught up in a row about a racist conspiracy theory.

The hugely wealthy businessman, who owns the X social media platform, will also meet the relatives of Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas.

President Isaac Herzog's office announced the meeting on Sunday night, saying, "In their meeting, the president will emphasize the need to act to combat rising antisemitism online."

Musk, a billionaire who also runs Tesla and SpaceX, did not respond to requests for comment through spokespeople for Tesla and X, formerly known as Twitter.

His visit coincides with a four-day truce in an Israeli war with Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza during which 40 of the 240 hostages Israel says have been held by Hamas have returned to Israel.

The President of Israel Isaac Herzog has called the BBC coverage of the conflict in the Middle East ‘atrocious’ and a ‘distortion of the facts’ (Justin Tallis/PA) (PA Archive)

Israel's Channel 12 said Musk would also meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. There was no immediate comment from his office.

Netanyahu met Musk in California on September 18 and urged him to strike a balance between protecting free expression and fighting hate speech after weeks of controversy over antisemitic content on X.

Musk responded by saying he was against antisemitism and against anything that "promotes hate and conflict," repeating his previous statements that X would not promote hate speech.

But on November 15, Musk agreed with a post on X that falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user who referenced the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory was speaking "the actual truth."

The White House condemned what it called an "abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate" that "runs against our core values as Americans."

Major U.S. companies including Walt Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and NBCUniversal parent Comcast paused their advertisements on his social media site.

The "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory holds that Jewish people and leftists are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants that will lead to a "white genocide."

Musk has said X should be a platform for people to post diverse viewpoints, but the company will limit the distribution of certain posts that may violate its policies, calling the approach "freedom of speech, not reach."

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