Rabbi Slams El-Sayed’s ‘Conditional’ Apology for Temple Israel Terror Response

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed faces accusations of antisemitism in the final hours of the Michigan Senate race, while Jewish voters and organizations remain sharply divided over his candidacy.

Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., who narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the Democratic Party primary, endorsed his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, on Sunday, after she criticized the Democrat’s failure to condemn a pro-El-Sayed ad seen as antisemitic.

Critics have noted El-Sayed’s description of Israel’s acts as “genocide,” as well as his opposition to Israeli military aid. He responded to a terrorist attack at a local synagogue by saying, “Hurt people hurt people,” and he made repeated campaign appearances alongside far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.

El-Sayed offered an apology to those who felt his response to the synagogue attack was hurtful, but critics argue that the controversies reflect a broader pattern.

“They’re one worldview, not four separate positions,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told the Daily Signal in a statement Monday. “But what makes it most serious is what that worldview means for Jews here at home.”

“When a candidate tells Americans that Israel is not an ally, that it is committing ‘genocide’ with American money, and then campaigns alongside Hasan Piker, who warned that if American Jews keep supporting Israel ‘eventually someone’s going to come around and take action … against American Jews,’ that isn’t foreign policy. It’s racism and bigotry dressed up as politics,” Menken said.

TRENDING ARTICLES

analysis

10,000 Swing-State Voters Were Asked About Socialism. Here’s What They Said.

Robert B. Bluey

news

NYT Poll: Late Deciders in Key Senate Races Breaking Toward Republicans

Al Perrotta

opinion

Faith Amidst Midterm Elections 

Thomas Griffin

Other Jewish voters see El-Sayed very differently.

Stacie Chaiken, a spokeswoman for Michigan Jews for Democracy, told the Daily Signal that its Sept. 17 letter supporting El-Sayed “has been signed by more than 1,000 vetted Michigan voters.”

Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, which helped launch the Michigan Jews for Democracy effort, also endorsed El-Sayed. Jamie Beran, CEO of Bend the Arc, noted that while the Democrat Senate candidate’s “positions on Israel” may be divisive, El-Sayed “scored 100% in alignment with our entirely domestic policy agenda on topics ranging from immigration to fighting antisemitism to LGBTQ+ rights.”

Beran also condemned “the disturbing trend of using Islamophobia and anti-Arab bigotry to attack El-Sayed on the basis of his faith and race.”

Jewish Voice for Peace Action, another left-leaning group, praised El-Sayed for his remarks on Israel. “Abdul is the only candidate in the race calling Israel’s actions genocide and apartheid, and the only one promising to vote against all military funding and weapons to the Israeli government,” the group posted.

Voices Against El-Sayed

Other Michigan Jews have united against El-Sayed, however.

A group calling itself Michigan Jews Against Extremism and identifying as “Democrats and Independents” endorsed Rogers. While the group’s members say they “have been fiercely supportive of Democratic candidates and principles,” they “have felt threatened and alienated by the politics and allies embraced by Abdul El-Sayed, which has included demonization of Jews, equivocation on terrorism, exclusion of Jewish Americans from public life, and expression of implacable hatred of the world’s only Jewish nation.”

The group’s statement has attracted 561 signatures.

In September, the coalition Nonnegotiable Michigan, representing 40,000 Jewish clergy and synagogue lay leaders, pressured El-Sayed to affirm Jewish safety—including for Zionist Jews, Jewish sovereignty in Israel, and full Jewish participation in American life—as “nonnegotiable.”

The group claims El-Sayed has not agreed to uphold these principles. Neither the coalition nor El-Sayed’s campaign responded to the Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.

Rabbi Menken, the Coalition for Jewish Values leader, emphasized El-Sayed’s lack of response to Nonnegotiable Michigan.

“For months, Michigan Jewish leaders, including people who share his politics, asked him to sign simple commitments on Jewish safety,” he said. “His silence has spoken for him.”

The rabbi also emphasized El-Sayed’s response to the Temple Israel attack in West Bloomfield Township in March. The perpetrator, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, had rammed his vehicle into the temple and started a fire one week after he lost four relatives in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. He failed to injure any students or staff and took his own life.

El-Sayed condemned the attack but added that “hurt people hurt people,” a reference to Ghazali’s lost relatives.

Menken noted that El-Sayed’s response also asked viewers to imagine a world without airstrikes in Lebanon or war in Iran. “El-Sayed claimed that a war to prevent children from being slaughtered in Northern Israel explained why someone might try to slaughter children in Michigan. That’s vile and utterly disqualifying,” he said.

In August, El-Sayed said that his comments “may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify.” He added: “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”

The rabbi called the apology “conditional.”

“The problem was never hurt feelings; it was and remains his belief that Jewish safety in Michigan depends on what bigots have to say about Israel’s conduct overseas,” Menken said.

El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.