A Palestinian journalist blew right through the forbidden red line of African American racist terms by referring to black House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as a “monkey” and a “boy.”
Now, former MSNBC commentator Rula Jebreal is trying to explain, but black lawmakers are having none of it.
Specifically, Jebreal took fire from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Friday after she called Jeffries an “AIPAC monkey” — the acronym a reference to the pro-Israel lobby group American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — and then an “errand boy,” a description dangerously close to the definition of a slave.
Jebreal used the epithets during an appearance on Wajahat Ali’s The Left Hook podcast where she criticized the black Democrat’s support for Israel and accused him of doing the bidding of AIPAC.
“His name is Hakeem. ‘Hakeem’ is an Arabic name which means ‘healer.’ He’s not a healer, he’s a divider,” Jebreal said, the New York Post reported.
“He is a bought and paid by AIPAC monkey,” she continued. “With all due respect — and I don’t mean it in a racist way.”
“He is just basically an errand boy, and we’re done and tired,” Jebreal said.
After Jabreal’s rant, Ali tried to bail her out of linguistic trouble, interjecting that using the term “monkey” has “terrible racial connotations… but I think you caught yourself and said you didn’t mean it with any racial animosity.”
Jabreal attempted to clarify: “There are these three monkeys — one, I cannot hear, I cannot see, I cannot speak — it reminds me of these three monkeys.”
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) rejected the 53-year-old Jebreal’s defense.
“To be clear, there isn’t a non-racist way to call Leader Jeffries — a Black man — a ‘monkey’ or ‘errand boy,’” the group posted on X.
The caucus also slammed Ali, a critic of Israel, writing, “This is what happens when we hold ourselves to such low standards for what’s allowable in our discourse — people get comfortable being openly bigoted.”
“We have to stop platforming and trafficking in anti-Black racism, whether it’s on the political right or the left,” the CBC added.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) similarly argued in an X post that “calling a Black man a ‘monkey’ is racist. Full stop.”
“If Wajahat Ali and Rula Jebreal were on the far right, no one on the far left would have any trouble condemning them for dehumanizing a Black man in racist terms,” the black congressman added. “The silence is deafening.”
Friday, Jabreal issued an apology on X, writing: “I am disgusted and horrified that Hakeem Jeffries is taking money from AIPAC amidst Israel’s genocide in Palestine,” she wrote. “That said, a term that I used to describe him was inappropriate and offensive and should never have been used.”
“I apologize unconditionally,” she concluded.
Israel-born journalist Jebreal describes herself as a Palestinian foreign policy analyst. She is also a novelist and screenwriter and was a commentator for MSNBC until 2014 when she left the cable network after calling the news media and U.S. government biased in its support of Israel.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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