Three Jewish-led campaigns form in Michigan over El-Sayed's Israel positions

Vance calls El-Sayed ‘very, very evil’ at Sterling Heights rally

Michigan’s Jewish community, estimated at roughly 130,000 people, has become the site of competing campaigns over El-Sayed’s candidacy. A 2021 study reported that 61% of Michigan’s Jewish adults identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 31% identified with or leaned Republican — lower than the 42% Republican identification rate among all Michigan adults, according to The Guardian. Those baseline numbers now sit beneath a more public fight, with active campaigns pulling in opposite directions on the basis of El-Sayed’s positions on Israel and his handling of the synagogue attack.

El-Sayed’s positions on Israel-Palestine — including his call for an end to U.S. offensive and defensive military aid — have become the focus of an organized effort to push Jewish Michiganders toward Rogers. That effort has been met by a counter-campaign in El-Sayed’s favor, including the first-ever endorsement from Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-Palestine organization that The Guardian identifies as representing roughly 750,000 members and supporters nationwide. The endorsement came in June and helped El-Sayed defeat Stevens, who had received tens of millions of dollars from AIPAC during the primary. “After the primary, some of the members of our [T’chiyah] congregation who voted for Stevens started showing up to the Jews for Abdul meetings because they were just like: ‘We don’t totally align with him on [Israel], but we are very clear that the alternative is really bad,’” said Jackson Koeppel, a 33-year-old Detroit-based volunteer with Jews for Abdul, a group critical of Israel.

The March attack on Temple Israel sharpened the dispute. On March 12, Ayman Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Lebanon, drove his truck into the Detroit synagogue, causing a fire and injuring a security guard. An FBI investigation concluded that Ghazali was inspired by Hezbollah, and two of his brothers, a niece and a nephew had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon days before the attack, The Guardian reported. El-Sayed drew criticism for comments shortly afterward, including saying that “hurt people hurt people.” He later apologized, saying he had “jumped too quickly to provide ‘context’ for the attack, ‘but it wasn’t the time for context.’”

Jess Newman, a political organizer who sits on the Ferndale school board and volunteers about 10 hours a week for El-Sayed, told The Guardian that the attack was personal. “I grew up going to services there,” she said of Temple Israel. But she also recalled a more anxious reaction from others close to the synagogue: “The reaction to it from people close to it that I know in my family is ‘we need AK-47s under our beds.’” Newman framed antisemitism as a problem that requires honest discussion of context. “There is a problem with antisemitism,” she said. “I think it is made all that much harder to deal with when you can’t have a sensible conversation about why violence is happening … you cannot divorce violence invited upon people from violence being done around the world.”

Six miles northwest of Newman’s neighborhood, Oak Park is described by The Guardian as “the heartbeat of Michigan’s Orthodox Jewish community,” home to Jewish retirement homes, synagogues and kosher bakeries. Antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on a synagogue there last April. “In the Jewish community, I think we have an awareness that it’s not if something is going to happen, it’s when something is going to happen. This isn’t the first incident we’ve had here,” Rabbi Robert Gamer of Congregation Beth Shalom told CBS Detroit that month. El-Sayed lost Oak Park’s Oakland County to Stevens in the primary by nearly 20,000 votes — a margin larger than his 15,000-vote statewide win.

Since the primary, El-Sayed has made a concerted effort to meet with Jewish leaders, including the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus, which had not yet endorsed him at the time of The Guardian’s reporting. The Michigan Jews for Democracy open letter supporting him had gathered roughly 1,000 signatures. Other rabbis and Jewish leaders had formed the Nonnegotiable Michigan petition, which among other things demands that candidates support “Jewish sovereignty in Israel.” El-Sayed, according to the article, has said he supports “equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination” for both Israelis and Palestinians, “through whatever political system both peoples choose.” A third initiative was openly calling on Jewish Democrats and independents to back Rogers, claiming “All of us have felt threatened and alienated by the politics and allies embraced by Abdul El-Sayed.”

The split extends to synagogue rabbis who have met El-Sayed personally. Rabbi Josh Whinston of Temple Beth Emeth in Ann Arbor, who has joined the Nonnegotiable initiative, told The Guardian that comments El-Sayed made the morning after his primary win prompted particular concern. “When I hear Dr El-Sayed, the morning after the primary, talk about Israel as bloodthirsty and then in the evening tell me that he cared about my security, that really created such a dissonance in my head,” Whinston said, adding that he viewed the term “bloodthirsty” as playing into an antisemitic trope. Whinston said he had met El-Sayed in a one-on-one meeting and that his door was not closed to voting for him: “He is an inspiring leader I think he has the potential to do amazing things in our country. He is moving in the right direction; he has not moved far enough.”

The broader race has drawn national attention. Last month, Vice President JD Vance spoke personally with a rabbi and a security guard from Temple Israel and held a rally in nearby Sterling Heights at which he called El-Sayed “very, very evil.” Temple Israel declined an interview request from The Guardian. El-Sayed has also drawn criticism for links to Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer who has become a target for attacks from Republicans and centrist Democrats.

The financial picture is unusually heavy. Elon Musk has spent $1 million in Michigan on online ads targeting El-Sayed, according to the article. Rogers, a former U.S. representative, and his wife have a net worth The Guardian places between $7 million and $14 million. Last month, Rogers asked AIPAC not to publicly spend advertising money on his behalf, a step The Guardian’s reporting described as acknowledging a growing concern Michigan voters have with the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization. Polls have put El-Sayed and Rogers in a dead heat.

For Newman, who went on a Birthright trip to Israel at 18, the choice comes down to character and policy. “He’s principled; he believes in and has actually done work to build better conditions for people in the [Michigan] health departments,” she said of El-Sayed. “He’s running a campaign that I can respect; he’s not taking any corporate money, which is a huge piece of this.”