Palestinian Activist Rula Jebreal Calls Hakeem Jeffries a ‘Monkey’ As NYT Writer Wajahat Ali Nods Along

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It’s no secret that Democrats are in full disarray headed into the 2026 midterms over the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the string of House primary victories their card-carrying candidates have had in states like New York and Colorado.

And in their biggest win to date in this election cycle, in a statewide race, DSA-backed Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Democratic Senate nomination. El-Sayed claims he’s not a Democratic Socialist, but his policies – like Medicare for All and defunding the police – fall right in line with the DSA.

Within the warring factions is a subset of voters crucial to Democratic electoral victories: black voters. And the underlying data from the Democratic House primaries in New York and the Michigan Democratic Senate primary made clear that black Democratic voters were not particularly enthusiastic about the DSA candidates who were pretending to be their saviors.

The result has been that candidates like El-Sayed have had to try to shore up the black vote at a time when candidates are typically spending time and resources appealing to a broader cross-section of voters.

Needless to say, when you’re a Democrat who has trouble connecting with key voting blocs, the last thing you want to have happen is to have your prominent supporters make it worse.

But that is exactly what happened during a recent podcast that featured New York Times writer and El-Sayed supporter Wajahat Ali alongside Palestinian activist/journalist Rula Jebreal.  There was a fair amount of bashing going on about House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08) being insufficiently anti-Israel. But Jebreal took it to another level when she referred to Jeffries as an “AIPAC monkey” while Ali merely stared and nodded:

“By the way, his name is Hakeem. ‘Hakeem’ is an Arabic name which means ‘healer.’ He’s not a healer, he’s a divider,” Jebreal told Ali.

“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.

Watch:

Sadly for Ali and Jebreal, the Congressional Black Caucus was paying attention and responded accordingly:

To be clear, there isn’t a non-racist way to call Leader Jeffries—a Black man—a “monkey” or “errand boy.”

@WajahatAli, 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.

As did Democratic House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (MA-05) and other House Dems:

For her part, Jebreal has issued an apology of sorts, but she couldn’t resist throwing in another false accusation of “Israeli genocide” for good measure:

The thing is, though, she knew at the time what she was saying, considering these tweets that have not aged well:

They both knew:

Ali, meanwhile, is spinning like a top, engaging in whataboutism in response to the criticism and outrage while posting a longer clip where he mentioned it was wrong to call a black person a monkey, which actually makes him look worse when you consider that he tossed it in there as an obligatory, throwaway line:

But the real issue here, y’all, is that Ali is the true victim in all of this:

As if it ever existed in the first place.

– Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via X. –

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