Rula Jebreal calls Jeffries a ‘monkey’. The ‘woke’ narrative only holds up if you read from the script

MP Hakeem Sekou Jeffries is a Democrat and Black, but he is also a Zionist, and his defence of Israel negates any other commendable ‘woke’ qualities. Rula Jebreal has described the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives as an ‘AIPAC monkey’, named after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the most influential pro-Israeli organisations in US politics. Jeffries is African American, and the use of the word ‘monkey’ against a person of colour belongs to the dark recesses of the American consciousness.

This is notable for a commentator who accuses anyone she disagrees with of racism. Jebreal subsequently posted an apology on social media, acknowledging that the term was “inappropriate and offensive” and that it should not have been used, concluding with an unreserved apology. The chair of England’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities, Tony Sewell, was compared to the Ku Klux Klan for saying that there is no systemic racism in his country. Trevor Phillips, a British politician and journalist of Guyanese origin – formerly president of the NUS (the National Union of Students), then a BBC presenter, and finally ‘czar’ of the Equality Commission – was called ‘Uncle Tom’ for criticising multiculturalism. In France, the writer Rachel Khan is called a ‘black maid’ for criticising anti-racism. The Algerian writer Kamel Daoud has been labelled the ‘token Arab’. It is notable how quickly all that rhetoric of inclusion dissolves in an instant if a Black person defends Israel, if a Black person criticises anti-racism, and if an Arab says they love France rather than being a victim of it. The same mechanism kicks in and their membership is revoked. Identity, which was meant to be a shield, becomes a cage. It is at that point that ‘woke’ reveals its true duration: as brief as loyalty to the script.