Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, has earned the condemnation of Michigan’s Jewish community and of everyone who takes antisemitism seriously.
After the March 12 attack on Temple Israel, a synagogue and preschool in West Bloomfield, El-Sayed condemned the violence and then explained it. “Hurt people hurt people,” he said, calling it part of a cycle of violence tied to Israeli strikes in Lebanon that killed the attacker’s relatives. Months later, he apologized, saying his comments “may have been misconstrued” and that it “wasn’t the time for context.” For many Jewish Michiganders, the damage was already done.
He has called Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide,” called the Israeli government as “evil” as Hamas, and demanded an end to U.S. assistance to Israel. He has said Israel is “not actually our friend,” and declines to affirm its right to exist as a Jewish state because he does not believe in “ethno-states,” a principle applied, in practice, to the world’s one Jewish state.
In the primary, he built his campaign against Rep. Haley Stevens around AIPAC and pro-Israel spending, describing it as an influence that buys American elections. His critics see in that framing an old trope about Jewish money and power. He also long associated with streamer Hasan Piker, distancing himself only after the backlash.
Now the money question has been turned on his own campaign. In a recent undercover video by James O’Keefe’s O’Keefe Media Group, Abdoul Beckwith, a Michigan Democratic Party coordinated-campaign field organizer (not an Abdul campaign employee, per the campaign), claimed the candidate receives illegal overseas donations routed through family members — and said El-Sayed cannot openly denounce Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood without losing the support of the people who elevated him. Beckwith has since been fired; the campaign and the state party deny his claims, and Beckwith disputes O’Keefe’s characterization of his remarks.
The video proves nothing on its own. But it lands on a record that already speaks for itself: explaining away violence against Jews, denying the Jewish state’s legitimacy, and treating pro-Israel political participation as corruption. Michigan voters are entitled to call that pattern by its name.
