Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed apologized this weekend to Jewish Democrats over remarks he made after a March attack on a suburban Detroit synagogue, but he refused to distance himself from left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, a vocal supporter of his campaign.
El-Sayed made the apology Saturday at an appearance before the Michigan Democrats’ Jewish Caucus and in response to a question from Fox News Digital, delivered at the state party’s nominating convention in Lansing. Republican rival Mike Rogers is calling it a “sham apology.”
El-Sayed is running against Rogers, the former congressman making his second straight Senate bid after losing by roughly 20,000 votes in 2024, for an open Senate seat Democrats need to hold to retake the chamber. El-Sayed won a divisive primary over Rep. Haley Stevens, a result widely seen as the left’s biggest win yet in its fight with Democratic Party moderates.
The Synagogue Comments
The controversy traces back to a March attack on a Michigan synagogue. Federal investigators say the gunman was inspired and radicalized by Hezbollah and had lost relatives in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon a week before the attack. He crashed into the synagogue seeking to kill as many Jewish people as possible.
El-Sayed’s response at the time was: “Hurt people, hurt people.” That drew criticism from within his own party, including from Michigan Secretary of State Dana Nessel, who cited the comments in a recent interview with The Atlantic and skipped this weekend’s convention partly over concerns about antisemitism in the Democratic Party.
Asked about it by Fox News Digital, El-Sayed said his words “might have been misconstrued to be justifying something I did not intend to justify,” then apologized directly: “To anybody who feels like my comments may have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention. We condemned that terrorist attack. We condemned it outright. What I was trying to do was offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context and you don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain.”
El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former Wayne County Health Department director, would become the nation’s first Muslim senator if elected. He opposes unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel and has repeatedly declined to say directly whether Israel has the right to exist.
He said his message to Jewish voters is: “We may not agree on everything when it comes to foreign policy… I’m not going to stop fighting for Palestinian self-determination… but that does not mean that I will not stand up… for safety for all communities and I believe in the safety and dignity of Jewish kids like I believe in the safety and dignity of my own kids.”
Before facing reporters, El-Sayed met privately in Lansing with the state’s Democratic Jewish Caucus. Daniel Rivkin, a convention delegate and caucus member, told Fox News Digital: “He just had a very good meeting with us. We’re having real conversations.” The campaign is also in the process of hiring a Jewish liaison, Fox News Digital confirmed Monday.
Not Everyone Is Convinced
Some Jewish leaders in Michigan went the other direction Saturday, publishing an open letter urging Jewish Democrats and independents to back Rogers instead. “Many of us have been fiercely supportive of Democratic candidates and principles. All of us 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 letter stated.
Rogers seized on the letter, saying: “Abdul El-Sayed fans the flames of antisemitism. We’re fighting to extinguish it.” On Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” Monday, Rogers said, “We’ve had so many Democrat Jewish people here in the state of Michigan ring up our phone and say, ‘I can’t do this. I’m for you.'” He added of El-Sayed’s apology: “When someone says you might have been offended by what I said, that’s not an apology,” and claimed El-Sayed “has a long history of antisemitic and inflammatory comments.”
El-Sayed has pushed back on that characterization, saying: “My commitment to Jewish safety is the same as my commitment to the safety of my own kids. We have a responsibility to take on antisemitism in all of its forms, wherever we see it.”
The Piker Problem
El-Sayed’s outreach to Jewish voters is complicated by his continued backing from Hasan Piker, who endorsed him in the primary and appeared at campaign events, including a primary-night party in Detroit. Piker recently featured on his stream an image of state Sen. Jeremy Moss, the Democratic nominee in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, tied to a fake audio clip claiming Moss’s entire reason for running was to guarantee continued U.S. support for Israel. Piker said on stream: “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.”
Piker has also previously said “America deserved 9/11,” praised Mao Zedong and Communist China, and argued capitalists should be murdered in the streets. He has stood by his past comments critical of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
El-Sayed has tried to put distance between himself and Piker without cutting ties: “I want to be crystal clear, nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople.” When reporters pressed him Saturday, he dismissed the issue: “We’re in the state of Michigan. If you want to make this race about a streamer in California, I just think you’re missing the boat. This is about affordability in Michigan. This is about seeing a doctor in Michigan. This is about Donald Trump’s disastrous policies in Michigan. That’s what I’m focused on right now.” He continued to describe Piker as
