By New York Post (World News) | Created at 2025-01-23 18:05:05 | Updated at 2025-01-23 21:28:22
3 hours ago
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Elon Musk was being “falsely smeared” over a viral video of the Tesla CEO performing what many have said was a Nazi salute during a rally for President Trump’s inauguration.
Netanyahu came to Musk’s defense on Thursday, rejecting claims that Musk performed a Third-Reich-style hand gesture as he echoed the richest man in the world’s claim that he was being targeted by leftists.
“@elonmusk is being falsely smeared,” Netanyahu wrote on X, which is owned by the Tesla CEO.
“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,” the prime minister added.
“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,” Netanyahu concluded.
Musk’s trip to Israel in November 2023 came after he faced intense backlash for agreeing with a user on X who claimed that Jewish communities push “hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”
The allegations of antisemitism against Musk resurfaced Monday after he made the salute twice during the Trump rally, which threw social media into a maelstrom as many claimed the gesture was an overt Sieg Heil.
Following the backlash, Musk took to X to slam his detractors, claiming they were the ones who were truly antisemitic by bringing up the pro-Palestinian protests that have sprung up across the nation since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
“The radical leftists are really upset that they had to take time out of their busy day praising Hamas to call me a Nazi,” Musk wrote.
Along with Netanyahu, the Anti-Defamation League also defended Musk, saying too many people “are on edge” following Trump’s return to the White House on Monday.
“It seems that [Musk] made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” the antisemitism watchdog wrote on X.
US Rep. Dan Goldman (R-NY), the co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, rejected the ADL’s statement and said it was clear what Musk had done.
“Viewed in that context, and regardless of any justification, his salute last night at Donald Trump’s inauguration rally can only be interpreted as a Seig Heil salute that is synonymous with Nazi support for Hitler,” Goldman said in a statement.
