Tel Aviv, Sept. 15, (dpa/GNA) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with tech billionaire Elon Musk during a visit to the United States next week, the premier’s office said on Thursday.
The meeting is scheduled for Monday, Netanyahu’s office said.
Musk recently drew accusations of anti-Semitism after attacking financier and Holocaust survivor George Soros and the New York-based Jewish organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
According to media reports, Netanyahu will first make a stopover in California before attending the UN General Assembly in New York at the end of next week.
It was unclear whether Netanyahu would also meet US President Joe Biden. In the summer, the two had agreed to meet “in the autumn,” but no concrete date was set.
Observers see this as an expression of Biden’s dissatisfaction with the policies of Netanyahu’s right-wing religious government.
Musk bought what was then Twitter, now X, last October for around $44 billion with the promise of more free speech. Some big advertisers jumped ship because they feared a negative environment for their brands. The company’s advertising revenue is still only half of what it was before the takeover.
Under Musk, some banned accounts with right-wing views have been unlocked and he is taking the approach of limiting the spread of posts rather than deleting them.
Hate speech researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a new report this week saying that of 300 reported anti-Semitic and racist posts on X, 259 were still online after a week.
Musk claims that the ADL has slandered him and X with accusations of anti-Semitism and is responsible for the drop in sales. A few days ago, he brought up a poll about whether the ADL should be banned from the platform.
Observers subsequently found many anti-Semitic posts on the service. The ADL had criticized, among others, Musk’s ongoing outbursts against 92-year-old Soros, whom the X-owner accused of hating humanity.
Soros, who made a name for himself as a philanthropist, is a favourite target of the US political right.
Musk wrote on X in early September: “To be very clear, I’m for free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind.”
GNA