House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 24 April, 2023 (Photo: Amos Ben Gershom, GPO)

The leader of the Democrats in the US House of Representatives, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday as part of a Congressional delegation that will commemorate Israel’s 75th anniversary and participate in the recognition of Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu thanked US Rep. Jeffries and the members of the delegation for their support for the State of Israel and emphasized the importance of the relationship between Israel and the United States,” the Prime Minister’s office said in a statement. “The Prime Minister also discussed with them the need to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, the Abraham Accords and the opportunities for expanding the circle of peace with additional countries.”

Rep. Jeffries did not immediately respond to a request from The Algemeiner for comment.

Joining Rep. Jeffries on the delegation, his first foreign trip as Minority leader, were Representatives Meeks (D-NY), Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Clarke (D-NY), Plaskett (D-NY), Barragan (D-CA), Gottheimer (D-NJ), Horsford (D-NV), Fletcher (D-TX), Neguse (D-CO), Phillips (D-MN), and Jacobs (D-CA). The group also visited Ghana before arriving in Israel.

The trip follows the revelations first reported by CNN that Rep. Jeffries, who is frequently described as a staunchly pro-Israel Democrat and has received support from AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, defended his uncle Professor Leonard Jeffries and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in a college editorial in 1992. In 1991, Professor Jeffries, then-chair of Black Studies at CUNY, made a series of antisemitic statements in a lecture including that, “everyone knows rich Jews helped finance the slave trade,” and that Hollywood was controlled Jews in partnership with the Mafia to propagate a “a financial system of destruction of black people,” among other comments that resulted in his eventual departure from CUNY.

Rep. Jeffries, who had previously claimed he had only a “vague recollection” of the controversy around his uncle, wrote in the editorial that criticism of his uncle and Farrakhan were the product of “white media” and a “white power structure.”