NEW YORK – Amid a rash of anti-Semitic attacks, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday he will carry a “message of solidarity” with the Jewish community during an economic development trip to Israel this weekend.

“I am going to do an economic development trip to Israel, which is a great economic development partner of ours to talk about technology and joint ventures that we’re working on with technologies and to talk about security,” Cuomo said at a student rally organized by the Orthodox Union in Albany. “But I’m also going to bring a message of solidarity. And I want to say to the people of Israel and I want to say to the Jewish community in New York: You are not alone. And every person in the state of New York with any decency and understanding of what it means to be a New Yorker stands with you at this moment, and we speak with one voice condemning this repugnant behavior, and we stand arm-in-arm with the Jewish community.”

Cuomo first visited the Jewish State during the Gaza war in 2014. When running for reelection, the New York Governor promised a follow-up trade mission trip to Israel in his second term.

Recent bombs threats against Jewish community centers in New York State and across the nation has prompted Cuomo to speak out and position himself as a leader in fighting anti-Semitism.

“The Jewish community is very important to New York,” Cuomo said on Wednesday. “New York would be a different New York if it did not have the Jewish community. [The] largest population of Jewish people outside of Israel is where? New York. That’s one of the things that makes us special.”

Cuomo was also the first governor in the nation to sign an executive order to fight the anti-Israel BDS movement.

“Governor Cuomo has always been at the vanguard of Jewish community relations,” Councilman David Greenfield (D-Brooklyn) told Jewish Insider. “Especially when the Jewish community is under attack by a spike in anti-Semitism, this sends a clear message that the Governor is pro-Israel and committed to his Jewish constituents.”