Elon Musk responded early Saturday to the attacks on Israel conducted by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which could lead to widespread repercussions in the Middle East and beyond.
“Sorry to see what’s happening in Israel,” Musk posted on X. “I hope there can be peace one day.”
The Tesla CEO met last month in California with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who spoke to the owner of X (formerly Twitter) about antisemitism on the social media platform.
“Citizens of Israel, we are at war,” Netanyahu said Saturday after the widespread attacks. “Not an operation, not a round, at war.”
Musk also posted the reply “war” in response to a thread outlining the unfolding violence in Israel, which has resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries across the nation. Videos in the thread purportedly showed rockets being fired from the Gaza Strip, a Hamas infiltrator using a motorized hang glider to enter Israel, and fighters shooting randomly into an Israeli neighborhood from a pickup truck.
Early last month, Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League—a leading Jewish civil-rights organization—for at least $4 billion in damages, blaming the nonprofit for an advertising revenue slump on X. He posted on Sept. 4 that the organization “has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.”
He added, “To be super clear, I’m pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind.”
On Sept. 2, Musk posted, “The ADL has done a lot of good work in prior decades, but has been overzealous in recent years & hijacked by woke mind virus.”
The ADL and other civil rights groups have reported on a rise in extremist content on X after Musk took it over last year and set about dramatically revamping it, including by firing much of its staff.
The ADL said in a statement:
“To be clear, any allegation that ADL has somehow orchestrated a boycott of X or caused billions of dollars of losses to the company or is ‘pulling the strings’ for other advertisers is false. Indeed, we ourselves were advertising on the platform until the anti-ADL attacks began a few weeks ago. We now are preparing to do so again to bring our important message on fighting hate to X and its users.”
ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt said that Musk has amplified messaging from white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but he added that he didn’t think the billionaire himself is antisemitic.
“I can’t tell you what Elon thinks. I’ve talked to him enough times. I don’t think he’s an antisemite,” Greenblatt told the the Masters of Scale podcast in a Sept. 29 episode. “I’ve said that publicly. But what’s undeniable is the people who he is platforming, who he’s privileging with his audience are openly hateful, toxic. And I just find that incredibly troubling.”
