© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: People gather to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to California, as he plans to meet with businessman Elon Musk, at Union Square in San Francisco, California, USA, on the 18th September 2023. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File
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JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur accused by civil rights groups of amplifying anti-Jewish hatred on his social media platform Sunday on TV Channel 12. .
An Israeli source confirmed the visit by Musk, a billionaire who also runs Tesla (NASDAQ and SpaceX. Spokespeople for Tesla and X, formerly known as Twitter, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Musk’s visit coincides with a four-day truce in Israel’s war with Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza.
Netanyahu met with Musk in California on September 18 and urged him to strike a balance between protecting free expression and combating hate speech after weeks of controversy over anti-Semitic content on X.
Musk responded by saying he was against anti-Semitism and anything that “promotes hate and conflict,” repeating his previous statements that X would not promote hate speech.
During that visit, before the war, about 200 people protested the efforts of Netanyahu’s right-wing government to limit the powers of Israeli courts. They gathered in front of the Tesla factory in California, where the meeting took place.
Then, on November 15, Musk agreed with a post on “the real truth.”
The White House condemned what it called an “abhorrent promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hatred” that “runs counter to our fundamental values as Americans.”
Major American companies, including Walt disney (NYSE:), Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:), and NBCUniversal parent Comcast (NASDAQ:), paused their ads on their social media site.
The “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory holds that Jews and leftists are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants that will lead to a “white genocide.”
Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have increased in the United States and around the world, even during the seven-week war between Israel and Hamas.
After the outbreak of war, anti-Semitic incidents in the United States increased nearly 400% from the previous year, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization that fights anti-Semitism.
Musk has said that
Musk is developing an artificial intelligence startup xAI, and Israel is considered a world leader in this field, thanks to the booming computing and robotics industries.
Israel’s nearly $500 billion economy, previously on track to grow as high as 3% this year with low unemployment, is now estimated at around 2% with slow growth expected in 2024 as it continues. war. After an initial 6% drop at the start of the war, the dollar has gained 8% against the dollar and is now at pre-war levels. Aided mainly by local investors, stock prices have also recovered from a sharp decline last month.
