What brings together a far-left streamer, a right-wing nationalist and a progressive Democrat running for the United States Senate? Hostility toward Israel and Jews.
Abdul El-Sayed calls his campaign Michigan First. A more fitting slogan would be El-Sayed First or Jews Never.
El-Sayed campaigned alongside Hasan Piker, the influential left-wing streamer who compared heavily Jewish West Bloomfield, Michigan, to a Ku Klux Klan neighborhood. Piker took aim at a Jewish community in a state already shaken by an attack on Temple Israel earlier this year, in which El Sayed dismissed the antisemitism of the attacker saying “hurt people hurt people.”
El-Sayed also featured Tucker Carlson, the right-wing nationalist who has promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories and given a platform to Holocaust revisionism, in campaign advertising attacking Republican Mike Rogers.
El-Sayed received support from Imam Hassan Qazwini, who has claimed Israel created ISIS and praised a Hezbollah leader. Qazwini urged his congregation to vote for El-Sayed as a religious duty.
Cenk Uygur‘s Rebellion PAC produced an advertisement blaming Americans’ economic hardships on support for Israel, recycling the antisemitic conspiracy that Jews and their state are responsible for ordinary people’s suffering.
Different political camps, united by a common target – Jews and the Jewish State – urging voters to elect Abdul El Sayed to be a senator in Michigan.
Not every Democrat was willing to look away.
Michigan Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who endorsed El-Sayed after losing the primary, demanded that he remove the Carlson advertisement. Senator Elissa Slotkin condemned the PAC commercial. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged El-Sayed’s opposition to a Jewish state.
CNN commentator Van Jones called the PAC advertisement anti-Jewish hate, warning of the historical consequences of blaming Jews for society’s problems. Jones refused to choose which minority deserved protection based on the politics of the moment. His standard was the same for both.
Yet Stevens was reportedly asked to stay away from El-Sayed’s campaign events. Supporting the Democratic nominee was apparently insufficient. She was also expected to remain silent.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, herself Jewish, went further. Speaking to Jewish Democrats, she invoked a moral obligation to sacrifice the comfort, safety, security and even the future of their own people for the opportunity to save humanity.
Who gave Democrats the authority to decide that Jews must sacrifice their security for the party’s political ambitions?
Democrats like Senator Chris Murphy have turned the argument upside down, branding criticism of El-Sayed as Islamophobia while failing to confront the antisemitism surrounding his campaign. The candidate becomes the victim, his critics become the bigots, and Jewish Americans are expected to remain silent.
Congresswoman Debbie Dingell urged Democrats not to let the controversy surrounding Hasan Piker divide the party ahead of November. Party unity was apparently more important than confronting the rhetoric that provoked the controversy.
The burden has been reversed. Instead of demanding that El-Sayed answer for the extremists he embraces, Democratic leaders are asking Jewish Americans to explain why they cannot simply accept them. The candidate’s associations become secondary; the Jews who object become the political problem.
Democrats have spent years insisting that politicians are responsible for the extremists they embrace, applying that standard relentlessly to Donald Trump. Why should El-Sayed be exempt?
If a politician embraces / welcomes / ignores the notorious bigots to get elected, why should anyone vote for him? If a political party demands that Jews tolerate antisemitism to secure victory, why should any minority trust that party to defend its rights?
A party that unites around hatred of Jews is not a party worth defending, voting for or belonging to. It is not even a party worth preserving.
If saving democracy requires sacrificing the rights and security of Jews, what exactly is being saved?
Related:
Michigan’s Slide on Israel (April 2021)
