Why Netanyahu Loves Antisemites Like Elon Musk So Much

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

By cosying up to the world's most prominent Jew-haters while denouncing his critics, Netanyahu is betraying Jews wholesale. Musk is only the latest, dangerous example, but welcoming him to Israel in the middle of the Gaza war is particularly odious

The embrace by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his supporters of one of the world's most notorious antisemites would be shocking, were it not part of a perverse and dangerous pattern.

The embrace by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his supporters of one of the world’s most notorious antisemites would be shocking, were it not part of a perverse and dangerous pattern.

By publicly embracing Elon Musk, the Netanyahu government is not only sending a message that it values political support for its agenda above Israel’s core historical mission to provide a haven for the Jewish people from lethal antisemitism.

It is not only communicating that it values Israeli ethno-nationalism in its fully cynical, amoral glory over bedrock Jewish values and over Jews themselves.

I

What Netanyahu, leader of the Jewish state, is doing is betraying Jews, wholesale, and Musk is only the latest, but dangerous, example.

One by one, Netanyahu and his courtiers have reached out to some of the world’s most prominent Jew-haters, offering them absolution for their sins and Israel’s official license to carry on. By taking Musk to the scene of the Hamas massacres, he is also expropriating Jewish suffering to whitewash his antisemitism and his promotion of other antisemites on his website.

“I’ll overlook your hatred of the Jews if you bond with me on the basis of our mutual authoritarianism and racism,” is their message. And it has led to close ties with a vile club of the world’s most notorious antisemites including Putin, Orban, Musk, Erdogan, Trump and others.

Pro-democracy protest in Israel earlier this year outside the U.S. consulate. Placard reads: Trump Netanyahu 2024: Killing Democracy, Freedom and Humanity Together Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

For many years, the Netanyahu camp and right-wing Jewish allies have pushed the idea that the only good Jew is one who supports their agenda, while condemning the many millions of Jews who do not share their toxic politics. And the Bibi camp has attempted to take ownership of antisemitism in order to denounce dissenters as antisemites.

Call out Israeli policies for their institutional racism and systematic abuse of Palestinians, utter the “a” word, and you’ll be accused of being an antisemite, no matter if you’re a rabbi, a Holocaust survivor or a plain old New York liberal Jew. Dare suggest that Israel’s claim to statehood necessitate the same right for the Palestinians and you face the modern equivalent of excommunication.

In the wake of the despicable Hamas terror attack on October 7, this practice has gotten worse: both the one-step absolution for antisemites, and the conflation of pro-Netanyahu as philosemitism. Unquestioning support of the Israel’s government is now the litmus test for not only being pro-Israel but for being pro-Jewish. Many of us who have decried Hamas’ barbarism but also expressed concern for innocent Palestinians have been condemned as antisemites.

Yet, while Jews who condemns the racism and brutality of the Likud-led government are condemned, monstrous, serial spreaders of antisemitic conspiracy theories and white supremacist hate-speech are able to claim “some of my best friends of Israeli government officials,” even as they continue to enable, amplify, platform and actively support people spreading the very lies and bigoted positions that fueled the catastrophe that made the foundation of the Jewish state a necessity.

It is beyond twisted. It is evil. That Netanyahu would think it appropriate to flaunt this policy in the midst of the war in Gaza is particularly repulsive.

The Netanyahu government is making it as absolutely as clear as possible their distance from decency, but they are also ending the pretense that their values have anything to do with Jewish ideals or, frankly, with the well-being of Jews.

Let haters promote hate worldwide. Let the heirs of Nazi hate seek to revitalize the calumnies that led to the deaths of millions just a generation or two ago. So long as they support this prime minister, this government, these policies, the brutal and callous tactics being employed in this war, they can do so with passports stamped with Israeli entries and a potent inoculation against criticism for the antisemitism that fuel the haters’ rise worldwide.

During the Obama years, I was once asked to give a talk to Israeli diplomats in Washington. I tried to communicate that a generational shift had taken place in American politics. That while a prior generation, mine perhaps, who had grown up listening to the exploits of tiny Israel fighting off the Arab world and making the desert bloom, saw Israel in a largely heroic light, that was not true for subsequent generations, even those just a few years younger.

Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu with another of his unsavory illiberal friends, Hungary's Viktor Orban Credit: מארק ישראל סלם

I noted that while Barack Obama was still in college, Israel was accused of complicity in the Sabra and Shatila camp massacres. Thereafter, the country was seen increasingly as a regional bully or worse. The narrative had changed.

Sadly, during the years of Netanyahu’s leadership, born of his opposition to peace, his increasing cultivation of an ever-more extremist Israeli right, his arrogance and contempt for global human rights standards, Americans’ perceptions of Israel have grown ever worse.

Israel’s defenders at first would respond with their signature condescension: “You foreigners don’t understand, we live in a very tough neighborhood,” even as we in the U.S. and our allies were engaged in our own misbegotten wars in the region. But when that stopped working and as criticism grew even from some of Israel’s core supporters (viz. the majority of American Jews whose views are solidly liberal), a different approach was embraced.

The core concept behind that new approach was: “Why should a Jewish state have to deal with the views of those pesky Jews and our other historic supporters worldwide who are so opinionated and difficult to handle when racists, white supremacists and other religious extremists worldwide are so eager for validation?”

Pro-democracy protesters across from the New York City hotel where Netanyahu met U.S. President Joe Biden in September Credit: Emil Salman

The result was Netanyahu’s rejection of the well-established Democratic base for support for Israel in the U.S., his bearhug of Donald Trump and MAGA nation as well as his efforts to woo the world’s other thugs and creeps cited earlier.

The advantage the new global coalition Netanyahu engineered offers is that they are amoral and have the kind of autocratic, xenophobic, hypernationalist and irredentist tendencies for which the Israeli prime minister has long shown an affinity. Intolerant of any criticism, they promote the party line and denounce anyone who opposes them, even when that takes them to parodic places, like the Republican congressperson who told Fox News that   all socialists were antisemites .

Sure, these folks are antisemites during their day jobs and their support will wane the minute Israel steps away from the kind of racist policies they love—a sharp pivot which happens to be the only way to actually achieve any kind of lasting security for Israel. But long-term vision has been as anathema to Bibi and Company as doing the right thing.

So for now, we must endure the spectacle of an Israeli prime minister seeking momentary political advantage by Jew-washing haters who, history bleakly shows, are the ones most likely to pose a real threat to Jews and to Israel in the long-term.