Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday defended tech mogul Elon Musk and said that he was being “falsely smeared” in a row over a gesture made by the billionaire at Donald Trump’s inauguration that drew criticism widely with netizens even calling it a “Nazi salute”.
“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,” Netanyahu posted on X.
Netanyahu was responding to a post by the X owner, which read: “The radical leftists are really upset that they had to take time out of their busy day praising Hamas to call me a Nazi.”
What is row around Musk’s straight-arm gesture?
Musk, during United States President Donald Trump’s inauguration, said, “I just want to say thank you for making it happen.” Then he slapped his hand on his chest and extended his arm straight outward and upward with his palm facing downwards.
He then turned around and made a similar gesture facing the other way. “My heart goes out to you,” he said. Many social media users noticed that the gesture looked like a Nazi salute.
Musk has only fanned the flames of suspicion by not explicitly denying those claims in a dozen posts since, though he did make light of the criticism and lashed out at people making that interpretation.
“The everyone is Hitler attack is sooo tired,” Musk posted on X several hours after he left the stage. Critics and fans alike of the Tesla CEO and the world’s richest man were quick to react to the gesture.
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