A critical US Senate race is happening in Michigan that is tearing up progressive Jewish voters who would otherwise be drawn to support the Democratic nominee Abdul El Sayed but are repelled by the antisemitic tone of his primary campaign.
Let me be as clear as possible. I would normally be totally supportive of a candidate like El-Sayed who is a strong advocate for universal health care and taxing the wealthy to support public spending for the needy. In fact, El-Sayed likes to include in every speech his three easy slogans “US Money out of politics. Money in your pocket. Medicare for all.” I like all three slogans. More importantly it is possible that the winner of the Michigan Senate race will determine which party controls the US Senate for the next two years which is critically important to me.
Yet El-Sayed campaigned in the primary alongside of blatant Jew hating twitch streamer Hassan Piker and allowed antisemitic harassment by his supporters of other candidates at the Michigan State Democratic convention. He has never disavowed his Jew hating friend but has tried as a nominal act of appeasement to keep Piker at arms length until the general election is over.
He made a deeply offensive comment in March 2026 saying “hurt people hurt people” after Ayman Mohammad Ghazali drove his car packed with explosives into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township – a north-western suburb of Detroit – on March 12 reportedly saying before he died that he wanted to “kill as many of them as I possibly can”. The synagogue had more than 100 children in its pre-school at the time of the attack.
On August 31 – in an apparent attempt to win back some Jewish voters – El Sayed offered a very lame apology for his offensive statement. “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.” But then went on to clarify “What I was trying to do was offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context,” He didn’t even really apologize for what he said or the lack of empathy that it reflected but instead apologized for the timing of his offensive statement.
Let me be clear. When a Jew hating terrorist attacks a Jewish synagogue that houses preschool children, decent people say the terrorist attack is wrong full stop no explanation. Empathetic people offer their sympathy to the victims of the attack.
Not coincidentally, El-Sayed was campaigning along side of Jew hater Hassan Piker when he first made the offensive comment for which he then waited more than five months before offering his lame apology. But it is more than that.
El-Sayed refuses to state in any fashion his acceptance of the right of the Jewish people in Israel to have their own sovereign country. I have watched dozens of interviews in which El-Sayed has been asked the question in various forms and always he either refuses to answer, attacks the legitimacy of the question with a word salad response or attacks the premise of a Jewish state (no matter what its borders or policies.)
If not for all of this I would of course support El-Sayed and urge Michigan voters to elect him. But I am reminded of the three famous questions attributed to the great Rabbi Hillel in Pirkei Avot.
אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתַי
If am not for me who will be for me? If I am only for me what am I? and if not now then when?
I desperately hope that the Democrats win control of the United States Senate so that they can prevent the confirmation of any new Trump appointees to the Supreme Court but I do not want to see Abdul El-Sayed elevated to the United States Senate for the next six years. It’s a painful choice. In my heart of hearts I hope that El-Sayed loses his race but that the Dems win 51 seats without him.
I simply have no doubt that El-Sayed will resume his friendship with Hassan Piker as soon as it is politically feasible and will try to use his influence to enourage the destruction of the State of Israel. The destruction of the State of Israel would result in the murder of millions of Jews (probably including myself) who currently live there.
If I were a registered voter in the State of Michigan I would vote for Mike Rogers despite disagreeing with him on almost every issue and despite the risk that he might be the 50th vote in a split US Senate.