The Jewish Democrats trying to get to “yes” on Abdul El-Sayed

Abdul El-Sayed, US Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan, leaves the stage after speaking during the state Democratic Party's nominating convention on August 29, 2026 in Lansing, Michigan. | Sara Rice/Bloomberg via Getty Images Abdul El-Sayed is trying to win over undecided Jewish voters in Michigan — without compromising his substantive positions on Israel or disavowing his most radical allies.

During both his primary and general election campaigns, El-Sayed’s opponents have portrayed him as insensitive to Jewish concerns, if not outright antisemitic .

These charges have often rested on falsely equating El-Sayed’s opposition to Zionism (he is not committed to Israel’s existence as a majority Jewish state) with a hostility for Jewish people.

But in recent weeks, two other concerns came to the forefront.

One was El-Sayed’s response to an antisemitic attack on a Michigan synagogue.

In March, a 41-year-old named Ayman Mohamed Ghazali drove a truck into Temple Israel’s Jewish preschool.

Days later, El-Sayed condemned the attack, while also noting that Ghazali had recently lost family members to an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon.

El-Sayed suggested that these events illustrated how “hurt people hurt people” and that “violence is a cycle,” one that had led Ghazali to perpetrate “an evil act of displaced rage.” Separately, El-Sayed had campaigned with the far-left streamer Hasan Piker during his primary campaign.

This had always sat poorly with many Jewish and centrist Democrats in Michigan.

But Piker made his association with the Democratic Senate candidate more conspicuous in late August.

During a broadcast, Piker lambasted Jeremy Moss , a pro-Israel Jewish Democrat running for Congress in Michigan who had not endorsed El-Sayed but was in active conversations with the candidate about how to bridge lingering divides with Jewish voters .

More explosively, Piker said, among other things, that “if Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually somebody is going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.” He subsequently insisted he was merely spotlighting the hazards of portraying all Jews as ardent Israel supporters, not making some kind of veiled threat, as his detractors alleged.

Nonetheless, this triggered a new round of calls for El-Sayed to both disavow Piker, and to take other measures to reassure Michigan Jews that he cares about their safety.

These disagreements between El-Sayed and moderate Jewish voters reflect broader tensions within the Democratic Party nationally.