John Cusack has apologised after coming under fire for an antisemitic tweet.

Cusack retweeted a quotation, accompanied by a Star of David image, popular among the far right: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” It is often misattributed to Voltaire but is in fact a reworking of a quotation from American neo-nazi Kevin Alfred Strom. Cusack then added: “Follow the money.” He has since deleted the tweet.

Cusack initially appeared to defend his tweet in subsequent Twitter posts, in which he added comments such as: “You think Israel isn’t commuting [sic] atrocities against Palestinians? what planet are you on?”

He appears to have accepted that his original tweet was antisemitic, having posted: “Even if you don’t have antisemitic bone in your body, it is still an antisemitic cartoon.” Suggesting that he thought he was using the quote to attack Israeli policy, he added: “The use of the star, even if it depicts the state of Israel – committing human rights violations – when combined with anti Jewish tropes about power – is antisemitic & antisemitism has no place in any rational political dialoge [sic].”

He failed to address his own addition to the tweet, “Follow the money”, which incurred further accusations of antisemitism.