During a Wednesday morning press availability, following a divisive primary, the newly crowned Democratic nominee to represent Michigan in the United States Senate, Abdul El-Sayed, wisely stressed party unity:
The things that unite us are so much bigger than the things that divide us. … I know not everybody is going to agree with me on everything. That’s not how this works. But I do know that they agree with me on the need to beat [Republican nominee] Mike Rogers, and the need to hold Donald Trump accountable, and the need to provide people health care, and the need to address the affordability crisis … and the need to stop fighting stupid wars we should never be fighting.
El-Sayed did not cite his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict in his attempt to mend intra-party fences, which was tacit recognition of how divisive the issue was in a primary with an unofficial margin of slightly less than one percentage point. But also on Wednesday morning, in an interview on MS NOW’s Morning Joe, El-Sayed leveled harsh rhetoric at the Israeli government.
Asked if “your complaint [is] with the state of Israel, or is it with Benjamin Netanyahu and the way he has prosecuted this campaign in Gaza?” El-Sayed opted against a narrow critique.
“Those things, of course, are inextricable,” he replied, “I think we’ve seen the worst of what the Israeli government has done but let’s not forget that we’ve been talking about an illegal apartheid regime for a very, very long time and that supersedes Netanyahu himself.”
He continued, “I understand that Netanyahu is a big reason why they’ve gotten so aggressive and, frankly, so bloodthirsty under his reign, but I also understand that it’s impossible for us to say that we want a two-state solution while we’ve been aiding, arming, and abetting the very people who have been trying to foreclose on a Palestinian state.” No mention was made about Hamas which openly opposes a Jewish state.
At his press availability, El-Sayed tried to employ a softer touch, directly addressing “my Jewish-American sisters and brothers” and pledging “my commitment to your safety, my commitment to Jewish safety is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters.” But when asked by a reporter if he regretted his statement from March after an attempted terrorist attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield—which he condemned as an “evil act” but appear to rationalize the motivations of the attacker by saying “hurt people hurt people”—El-Sayed stood by it without a nod to, as the reporter noted, the “concern” the statement stirred among “Jewish voters.”
So what should El-Sayed say about the Middle East in the future? As little as possible.
El-Sayed’s decision to center barbed criticism of Israel and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which spent over $30 million trying to defeat him, was the defining feature of the primary campaign. It allowed him to outflank state Senator Mallory McMorrow on the left, eventually prompting her to suspend her campaign, and bring Representative Haley Stevens’ vocal support for Israel to the forefront at a time when Israel’s support among Democrats has tanked. As a wedge issue, Israel cleaved the Democratic electorate, leaving El-Sayed with the slightly larger chunk.
But in November, the Middle East issue is unlikely to perform the same function for El-Sayed. A recent poll of Michigan voters from EPIC-MRA found that half of the electorate doesn’t even know what AIPAC is. National polling from Pew Research Center shows stark differences within partisan groups and age cohorts regarding both the Israeli government and the Israeli people. Just 16 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have a favorable view of the Israeli government compared to 51 percent of their Republican counterparts. When it comes to the Israeli people, 43 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners are favorable versus 65 percent for the Republicans. Within both parties, younger voters now skew more negative towards the Israeli people while majorities of seniors in both parties remain positive.
To win a general election in Michigan, El-Sayed likely will need to broaden his appeal beyond his existing base. Several recent polls (if we can trust any polls of Michigan after so many primary pollsters projected a blowout for El-Sayed) show the former public health director trailing Rogers. According to 2024 exit polls, slightly more than a third of the Michigan electorate are independents, and Democrat Elissa Slotkin barely won her U.S. Senate race by taking those independents by 7 points as well as peeling off a sliver of Republicans. El-Sayed’s rhetoric on Israel fires up his young, progressive base, but probably not the swing voters he now needs to earn, let alone the Democrats he failed to impress in the primary.
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is the most divisive issue in the world for the last century. Nobody can talk about it without upsetting somebody. This is particularly true in Michigan, a state with significant Arab and Jewish populations. Anytime El-Sayed engages the subject, especially with his long track record of provocative statements, he is bound to complicate his political objective of unifying Democrats and appealing to independents. He needs to spend the bulk of his time on common ground, and as he noted himself, the size of that turf is large.
Can El-Sayed pivot on Israel-Palestine? Not easily. We saw an indication of a pivot in a New Yorker interview published Monday, in which he suggested openness to a two-state solution: “I believe in a process that offers a free Palestinian people the equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination that a free Jewish Israeli people ought to have. And then I will support whatever the outcome is that a free Palestinian people and a free Jewish Israeli people decide is the right outcome. If that’s two states, great, I’m for it. If it’s one state, I’m for that.”
But that openness sounded different than remarks he made in May stating that, “I often struggle with the question … ‘Do you believe in the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state,’ which, to me, forces the question of a definition of what a Jewish state means … and how that is consistent with any form of liberal values that we say we believe in here in the United States.”
Asked if he supports Israel’s right to exist in a June Zeteo interview, El-Sayed said, “I do not, I just dispute the idea that you should have an ethnostate,” which reads like he wouldn’t support Israel if it continued as a Jewish state. Whenever El-Sayed wades into this incredibly fraught topic, however delicately he approaches it now, he risks being forced to explain less delicate comments made in the recent past.
The better pivot for El-Sayed going forward, whenever Middle East issues are raised, is to pivot away from the issue entirely. In a recent online conversation, socialist streamer Hasan Piker brought up comments from Democratic operative James Carville who threatened to quit the party if Piker continued to gain influence. El-Sayed responded, “Why does anybody still listen to James Carville? He said one smart thing, once. And he seems to have forgotten it, which is ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’” El-Sayed should take that maxim to heart.
Often El-Sayed flimsily connects the issue of Israel to domestic concerns, suggesting military aid to Israel comes at the expense of funding for American health care and education. As those numbers simply don’t add up, continuing to blame Israel for America’s struggles will come across to those more sympathetic to Israel as scapegoating. To truly focus on the economy, leave Israel out of it. He can’t erase anything he said in the past, but he can change his focus. For example, El-Sayed could respond to a question about Israel with an answer along the lines of the following:
I know these questions about the Middle East are challenging, and I’ve made my views clear on the subject already. But what Michiganders come together on, and what my focus in the Senate is going to be on, is getting special interest money and influence out of politics and enacting policies that make daily life more affordable for everyday people.
Tuesday’s primary election results should be a searing reminder that anytime American politicians elevate the Israel-Palestine conflict—a conflict so divisive no one has figured out how to end it since Israeli independence was declared in 1948—divisions will follow. And more division is not what El-Sayed needs to stitch together a winning general election coalition.
