ISRAELI prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has backed Elon Musk after the world’s richest man threw multiple “Nazi salutes”.
Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX and is reportedly worth more than $400 billion, drew international criticism after using the white supremacist hand gesture on stage at Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Defenders of Musk – who has also supported neo-Nazis in Germany and is reportedly paying far-right agitator Tommy Robinson’s legal bills in the UK – claim that he did not mean to throw “Nazi salutes” but was only throwing his heart out to the crowd.
On Thursday, Netanyahu – who is wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court over alleged crimes against humanity – spoke out in defence of the billionaire.
“Elon Musk is being falsely smeared,” the Israeli prime minister wrote.
“Elon is a great friend of Israel. He visited Israel after the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists committed the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
“He has since repeatedly and forcefully supported Israel’s right to defend itself against genocidal terrorists and regimes who seek to annihilate the one and only Jewish state. I thank him for this.”
Musk did visit Israel in November 2023 – after he posted on his social media platform X that a conspiracy theory about Jewish people was “the actual truth”.
It went on to say that they were “deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realisation that those hordes of minorities that [they supported] flooding their country don't exactly like them too much”.
Musk said this was “the actual truth,” in a post which has not been taken down.
Amid the backlash, the White House said Musk had pushed a “hideous lie,” with a spokesperson adding: "We condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms.”
Musk then visited Israel in a bid to quash the idea that he is antisemitic.
In March 2023, research found that antisemitism on Twitter had more than doubled since Musk’s takeover, which saw him rename it X.
During his visit to Israel, Musk was told by president Isaac Herzog that social media "including some you lead, harbour so much of the age-old disease of antisemitism".
