Michigan rabbis press El-Sayed on Israel rhetoric

A petition signed by more than a dozen Michigan rabbis and Jewish leaders was launched Tuesday, pushing Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to shift his rhetoric on Israel as lingering anxiety and frustration from the primary pour over into the general election over the progressive’s stance on the U.S. ally.

“American Jews now feel forced to fight for the party they long claimed as their political home, asking its leaders to treat explosive bigotry and violence against our community as the national emergency it is not with platitudes, but with urgency and moral clarity,” said the petition, which was signed by 15 Michigan Jewish leaders, including Michigan Board of Rabbis president, Rabbi Aaron Starr.

The petition, which does not name El-Sayed but is clearly directed toward him, presses the Michigan Senate candidate to affirm Jewish safety, that Israel has a right to exist and to encourage the Jewish community’s civic and political participation.

“Treating Israel’s existence as a live question; using eliminationist language to describe Israel; raising an objection to ‘ethnostates’ that is never raised about any other state; or vilifying Israel as uniquely malevolent, are variations of the same demand: the dismantlement of only 1 out of the 193 countries in the world,” the petition said.

The petition refers to remarks El-Sayed made to The New York Times, which first reported on the petition , where he said he did not “believe in ethno-states, and I certainly don’t believe that our country is responsible to sustain ethno-states.”

“We reject cleverly worded arguments advanced to return the Jewish people to statelessness and powerlessness a position that a supermajority of Jews everywhere recognize as genocidal,” it added.

An El-Sayed campaign spokesperson declined to comment to the Times on the letter. The Hill has reached out to the El-Sayed campaign for comment.

The letter underscores the friction between Jewish leaders and El-Sayed, the latter of whom has been critical of Israel, has declined to say Israel has a right to exist, has called the events in Gaza a “genocide” and is against unconditional support to Israel.

Those positions are in stark contrast to his former primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who positioned herself as a staunch Israel ally while offering some criticism of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, United Democracy Project, spent more than $30 million to support Stevens and oppose El-Sayed in the Democratic primary. El-Sayed narrowly beat Stevens, who has since endorsed him.

El-Sayed has sought to make inroads with the Michigan Jewish community since the fractious primary, including apologizing for saying “hurt people hurt people” in response to an attack against a West Bloomfield Township synagogue earlier this spring the FBI said “was motivated and inspired by Hizballah’s militant ideology.”

“I made a mistake,” El-Sayed said before the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus at the state party’s convention last month. “I should have issued a statement, of course condemning it, and it just should have been the full stop.”

“If my statement caused pain, I’m sorry,” he said. “That was not what I intended.”

El-Sayed faces a competitive battle against Republican nominee Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) in 2024. El-Sayed needs to shore up support among Black voters, Jewish voters and non-college-educated voting blocs — which made up a key portion of Stevens’s coalition in the primary.

The nonpartisan election handicapper Cook Political Report rates the Senate seat a “toss up.”