Elon Musk delivers a salute at a Trump immigration rally. Inset: Musk’s Holocaust joke post. (Screenshot)
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come to the defense of Elon Musk, days after the billionaire and prominent Trump ally was accused of delivering Nazi salutes at a presidential inauguration rally.
One hour later, the world’s richest man was cracking Holocaust jokes on social media.
“Elon Musk is being falsely smeared,” Netanyahu wrote on Musk’s own social media account, X, Thursday morning. He avoided addressing Musk’s gesture directly but went on to call the tech mogul “a great friend of Israel.”
Netanyahu pointed to Musk’s visiting Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and advocating for what he said was “Israel’s right to defend itself against genocidal terrorists and regimes who seek to annihilate the one and only Jewish state.”
The prime minister, who remains in the political hot seat after agreeing to a tenuous ceasefire and hostage release agreement with Hamas, concluded, “I thank him for this.”
To which Musk, in turn, thanked him — only to fan the flames shortly after with a new X post.
“Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming,” Musk posted Thursday, adding laughing-face emojis.
His post earned reprobation from Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, a group that took criticism days earlier for declaring that Musk’s hand gesture was not a Nazi symbol.
“We’ve said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it,” Greenblatt wrote on X. Addressing Musk, he added, “The Holocaust is not a joke.”
Greenblatt’s own account had remained silent earlier in the week after Musk’s hand gesture; he’d also refrained from commenting on Musk during a panel on antisemitism earlier Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. An ADL spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about why Thursday’s post was denounced when the gesture wasn’t.
Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, denounced Musk’s jokes in stronger terms.
“Wordplay about Nazis isn’t funny. It isn’t clever. And it’s dangerous,” Deutch wrote on X. Addressing Musk, he added, “However you feel about the accusations being made against you, this is absolutely the wrong response. Nazi-themed ‘jokes’ are offensive and harmful. Don’t belittle the seriousness of the Holocaust; you give cover to those who seek to do the same.”
Linda Yaccarino, X’s CEO, also responded to Musk’s jokes — with a laughing-face emoji. Yaccarino, who was hired by Musk, has pledged to curb antisemitism on the platform in the past.
Netanyahu’s own vote of approval came after the Tesla CEO, on Monday, delivered two outstretched-arm salute motions to a cheering crowd following Trump’s swearing-in. Many Jewish groups and some Democrats accused Musk, who has a history of engaging with white supremacists, of performing an unambiguous Nazi salute.
The accusations themselves are also having real-world repercussions. In Milwaukee, a meteorologist for a CBS affiliate TV station was fired after writing in a profane post on her personal Instagram account stating that Musk “Nazi saluted twice.”
Protesters have seized on the charge: in Germany, an image of Musk’s raised arm with the word “Heil” was projected onto the side of a Tesla plant. And in Italy, a leftist student group hung an effigy of Musk at the Milan site where fascist prime minister Benito Mussolini was hanged in 1945.
Before his run of Nazi jokes, Musk — who now heads a government-efficiency program under Trump — had responded to the controversy by attacking his critics. “The radical leftists are really upset that they had to take time out of their busy day praising Hamas to call me a Nazi,” he wrote Wednesday on X, in a post shared by Netanyahu. The post echoed a growing pro-Israel talking point: that Musk’s critics are hypocrites for excusing antisemitism on the pro-Palestinian left.
Musk and Netanyahu have interacted several times over the past couple of years. Prior to Oct. 7, the billionaire had hosted the prime minister during a stateside visit for a discussion about artificial intelligence that also gave Netanyahu a platform to defend his much-protested judicial reform plan in Israel. After the attacks, Netanyahu hosted Musk on a visit to an Israeli kibbutz targeted by Hamas. When the prime minister addressed the U.S. House months later to galvanize support for Israel’s war in Gaza, Musk had a prominent observation point near rescued hostages.
Greenblatt’s Thursday critiques of Musk came days after the ADL had characterized his salute as “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.” The ADL’s quick stance was criticized by several Jews and non-Jews alike. In recent days, other Jewish groups are continuing to define Musk’s gesture as a Nazi salute and suggesting the ADL had failed to meet the moment.
“Those trying to deny, minimize, or explain away Elon’s Nazi salute should consider that right-wing extremists, white nationalists, and neo-Nazis are embracing it,” Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a Wednesday statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Trump and his allies don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt in this precarious moment for our community and country.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, named after the famous Nazi hunter, called Musk’s gesture “challenging to understand” and added, “It would be appropriate for him to clarify or apologize.”
During his Davos panel, Greenblatt classified social media as “a superspreader of antisemitism and hate.” He called Meta, an X competitor, “a gigantic problem,” but didn’t specifically reference Musk’s platform except for a brief aside that many people get their news from it. He did state that he believes “regulatory pressure and reputational pressure” are important checks against social media companies, and also used the panel to repeat his oft-emphasized claim that there is “an equal proportion of antisemitism on the political left and right.”
“These are extremists, not in the middle, but you see classic antisemitism from the far right. You see it in intense anti-Zionism from the far left,” Greenblatt said. “This plays out in harassment of individual Jews, vandalism of buildings, defacement and violence.” On the same panel, liberal Jewish teachers union leader Randi Weingarten stated, “We need the ADL to fight off both right-wing and left-wing antisemitism.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also did not mention Musk during his own appearance at Davos.
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