Whatever you think of him it is important that the elected representative of Jewish people exonerated him.

He is the elected prime minister of the state of Israel. He does not represent the Jewish people. While Israel is home to the largest number of Jews on Earth, most Jews do not live in Israel. And Israel is also home to a large number non-Jews whom Netanyahu is also the prime minister of.

It is in fact important that he is not representative of Jewish people.

> While Israel is home to the largest number of Jews on Earth,

Depends on your standards for who is a Jewish person: by many standards (including those used by the Israeli Law of Return), the US has more Jewish people than Israel.

EDIT: To be clear, I am not, in noting this fact, arguing against the parent's argument that (this is a paraphrase) the opinion of the head of a state with a large Jewish population (whether or not it is actually the largest in the world) does not itself constitute the response of world Judaism, either in general or specifically as an exoneration of an alleged expression of fascist sympathies; that position is absolutely correct, irrespective of which country happens to have the largest Jewish population.

I‘m thinking further about this argument, and it makes even less sense. Judaism doesn’t have a single spiritual leader like Catholicism or Tibetan Buddhism (the Pope and the Dalai Lama respectively). This is like saying that anti-Tibetan racism can be absolved if Yan Jinhai (the chairman of Tibet Autonomous region) or Gombojavyn Zandanshatar (the prime minister of Mongolia) has said nice things about the racist because most Tibetan Buddhists live in Tibet or Mongolia.

And the elected leader of the US was also supportive of Elon’s ‘gesture’ so I guess that settles it - Jewish people worldwide, as embodied through the representative voices of their elected leaders, must agree that it was not a Nazi salute. And that firmly settles it because nobody else gets to have any opinion about it because Nazis never bothered anyone else.

/s, just in case.

These are caveats but doesn’t change my point in a big way.

The elected representative of the country made for Jews which is the country that has highest Jewish population and has historical ties to Judaism has exonerated Elon.

It has symbolic meaning and fretting over a salute and boycotting the company seems performative.

> The elected representative of the country made

Elected by 23.41%? What about the remaining 76.50%? Also 30% didn't even vote.

Also what about the president of Poland and other victims of the nazis? Did they "exonerate" him?

Of course to be fair its hard to blame a drug addict who seemingly lacks self control for his erratic public behavior.

> seems performative

If those people stop buying Tesla's cars and that hurts its share price its not performative anymore.

That point was void to begin with. It is an appeal to authority in which the validity of the authority is on extremely shaky grounds.

> fretting over a salute and boycotting the company seems performative.

Performative actions are still actions, and sometimes deliver results. If those results are as little as make some people feel better, those are still results. That said, it is hard to be more performative than the gesture it self. So if you want to criticize HN users for being performative, you should apply the same standard to Elon Musk.

No, it's evidence that you twisted the truth to exaggerate the authority of your argument. It was a blatant attempt to inflate weak rhetoric that you had to know wouldn't pass in an educated audience. Otherwise you wouldn't have had to produce such a base lie.

This was swiftly refuted by tons of people who know who little Bibi is, including many Jews and Israelis who absolutely detest everything he has done and stands for. There are orthodox, mystic and progressive Jews alike who are all calling for his head as we speak. If you actually believe that he represents all Jews, then you lack the education to speak on any Jew but your own.

What's truly performative is the likes of the ADL and Netanyahu covering for Musk's nazi salute.

Their morally bankrupt calculus is that as long as Musk is an Israeli ally, they'll overlook the obvious. In a sad irony, this makes it more dangerous for the rest of us in the diaspora.

It's relevant, but it's not a winning argument. Democracy doesn't guarantee the election or ongoing approval of a person who is morally unimpeachable. If it did, Donald Trump wouldn't be president (and he's hardly the only one).

It’s not a winning argument.