El-Sayed previously blamed Israel for causing the Hezbollah-inspired terror attack at a Michigan synagogue in March
Abdul El-Sayed, the left-wing Democrat running for Michigan’s open Senate seat, sidestepped a question about whether the Democratic Party has a problem with antisemitism, instead accusing Israel of committing “apartheid and genocide” and claiming that both antisemitism and Islamophobia are products of “white supremacy.”
During a Thursday debate at the Mackinac Policy Conference, El-Sayed and his primary opponents, congresswoman Haley Stevens and state lawmaker Mallory McMorrow, were asked if there’s “an antisemitism problem in the Democratic Party.” McMorrow said, “there is,” while Stevens touted her work fighting the issue “in a bipartisan way.” El-Sayed’s answer was different.
“So, look, I know what it’s like to be discriminated against because of how I pray, and I know that antisemitism and Islamophobia tend to go hand in hand, and the real issue when it comes to either of them is the scourge of white supremacy,” El-Sayed said. “And I think it’s absolutely critical for us to differentiate between love, respect, and admiration for Judaism and the Jewish people, and a continued policy that has us sending our money to a foreign government. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.”
“So for me, when it comes to fighting antisemitism, you are not going to find anybody who is not Jewish who has the same focus on taking that on as somebody who understands that these two things go hand in hand together,” he continued. “And, so, we can do that, because we love all people, but it should not mean that we allow our money to subsidize apartheid and genocide against other people because people tell you that that’s about hatred for anybody. That’s about love for everybody.”
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El-Sayed has sparked controversy with his statements on Israel, antisemitism, and terrorism over the course of his campaign.
One day after a Dearborn Heights resident carried out a Hezbollah-inspired attack on a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich., in March, El-Sayed released a video statement that denounced the attack but also noted that the terrorist “lost family, including two children, in an airstrike in Lebanon last week. They were innocent people.” The gunman’s brother, however, was a Hezbollah commander. El-Sayed later argued that Israel caused the attack, saying during an event with anti-American streamer Hasan Piker, “I also think it’s just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people, and the circumstances happening 6,000 miles away can affect the lives that we live here, and if we stand against violence, we’ve got to stand against violence, all violence.”
El-Sayed has similarly blamed America for causing terror attacks. At a July 2025 campaign event, the Washington Free Beacon reported last month, he said terrorists commit “heinous act[s]” because they feel “pain and frustration and a level of lack of agency” as a result of “hypocritical” U.S. policies that are “creating pain.”
El-Sayed appears to be the primary’s frontrunner; a recent poll shows him with 28 percent support to Stevens’s 18 and McMorrow’s 17.