Benjamin Netanyahu and Elon Musk photo credit: Avi Ohayon (GPO)
Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu met with the controversial founder of Tesla Motors and owner of Twitter Elon Musk in California to talk about the future of AI. The meeting came at the start of Netanyahu’s trip to the US where he will attend the opening of the new UN General Assembly session in New York. However, it was not made clear why Netanyahu needed to begin his trip in California just to meet with Musk.
Their meeting was filmed and then released on Twitter for viewing.
On the AI revolution, Benjamin Netanyahu said, “It took us maybe a century to adapt to the industrial revolution. We may have just about a few years, and then we’re running out as we speak, to adapt to the AI revolution.”
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Once again the Prime Minister said things in English, and to an audience outside of Israel, that he has yet to say in the country itself.
“I have a majority in the parliament, in the Knesset, to legislate anything, but I didn’t. I held back because I want this to be a consensus,” Benjamin Netanyahu told Elon Musk. However, this is not really the case as Netanyahu only agreed to a temporary pause in pushing through his judicial reform legislation and entered into negotiations on it with the opposition after public outcry and pressure from Israel’s President.
Benjamin Netanyahu also told Elon Musk something that came as a shock to the Israeli public. The Prime Minister claimed that he rejected the part of the judicial reform plan that would allow the Knesset to overturn any Supreme Court ruling with an absolute majority vote of 61 of its 120 members.
Netanyahu claimed that he rejected creating, “one imbalance by creating another imbalance. If the court can rule against any decision made by the government or the parliament, then let’s not correct it by having the parliament reject any decision, with a simple majority that the court makes.”
This was news to everyone in Israel.
The comment was left out of the official statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office about the meeting.
The Prime Minister and his wife Sara Netanyahu also toured the Tesla plant in Fremont, California with Elon Musk serving as their guide.
Massive protests have rocked Israel since January when Justice Minister Yariv Levin revealed the government’s plans to alter the nature of Israel’s judicial system. The government’s judicial reform plan would greatly curtail the power of Israel’s Supreme Court to nullify legislation passed by the Knesset and also limit the authority of Israel’s attorney general. The opposition charges this would harm Israel’s democracy, eroding foreign confidence in the country and hurting its economy. And this is why the country is now on the brink of what some are describing as the biggest societal clash in Israel’s history.
