Dear Senator-elect…
Dear Senator-elect El-Sayed,
Congratulations on your election as the first Muslim senator in American history.
My name is Stuart Dow. I’m Founding Head of The Emery/Weiner School, a pluralistic Jewish day school in Houston – one of the largest in the country. We opened in 2001, the same year terrorists flew airplanes into the Twin Towers. The aftermath of that horrific incident included another tragedy: American Muslims became targets of suspicion and hatred for crimes they had neither committed nor condoned.
Your election represents a meaningful rebuke to that prejudice, especially given the attacks on your own faith during the campaign. Because you understand the danger of such rhetoric, I ask you to consider its consequences for another community: mine.
For years, I have given students in my Zionism class an assignment: To illustrate the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Typically, they have produced Venn diagrams explaining where the two overlapped and where they did not. There were distinctions worth exploring. For example, some ultra-Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism on theological grounds; and early Reform leaders rejected Jewish nationalism because they saw Judaism exclusively as a religion (a position the movement has since changed). Neither position could simply be dismissed as hatred of Jews.
But increasingly, I wonder whether this academic exercise misses a more pressing question: Regardless of what students might draw on a whiteboard, what happens to actual Jews when “Zionist” becomes a term of public vilification? This past weekend, Philadelphia offered an answer.
Protesters targeted Jewish-owned restaurants they called “Zionist establishments,” declaring those businesses “must go.” The boycott fell on the eve of Kristallnacht’s anniversary. Organizers denied intentional timing with the Nazi precedent, but the spectacle of Jewish businesses being singled out in America in 2026 was chilling.
After September 11, people claiming to oppose terrorism often directed hostility toward Muslims. Today, some insisting they oppose only Zionism direct hostility toward Jews. Their claimed distinction offers little protection to those on the receiving end of their hate, of which there are far too many.
According to the ADL, over 20,000 antisemitic incidents were reported in the United States between October 7, 2023, and the end of 2025, hundreds of which were violent. And according to the FBI, Jews were targets of 63% of religiously motivated hate crimes last year, despite constituting just over 2% of the population.
I’m not suggesting every criticism of Israel contributes to antisemitism or asking you to temper your concern for Palestinians. To be clear, their lives matter. But so do Jewish ones.
In your victory speech, you described Palestinian children as “murdered by our tax dollars.” And an advertisement supporting your candidacy presented assistance to Israel as money unavailable to Americans struggling to afford groceries. The ad was not only fraught with misinformation, it was designed to stoke anger about a single country and her supporters – and it raised a serious question about moral consistency.
Your parents are from Egypt. As such, you can appreciate how a foreign country can hold personal significance without its government commanding unqualified approval. Many Jews feel the same about Israel.
According to objective NGO’s, Egypt’s government suppresses political opposition and severely restricts press freedom and civil liberties. Religious discrimination persists. And with regard to the Palestinians about whom you frequently talk, Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip for twenty years without helping them. It still controls Gaza’s southern border, and does virtually nothing to aid its residents. Notably, the United States provides Egypt with approximately $1.5 billion annually. Yet you rarely talk about this Arab country, while repeatedly talking about the Jewish one.
Zionism isn’t allegiance to a particular government. It’s the belief that, after centuries of persecution and exile, the Jewish people have a right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland. That conviction can coexist with care for others, including Arabs inside and outside Israel—ideas I want my students to understand.
Consider what happened last month: Nearly 900,000 Arab citizens went to the polls in Israel, where they will be represented in the government. Nowhere else is in the Middle East is that fundamental, democratic right being exercised – something completely lost in the pervasive anti-Israel rhetoric to which you contribute.
Senator-elect, you have an extraordinary opportunity to model understanding. You can advocate for Palestinians while affirming Jewish self-determination. You can criticize Israel while rejecting “Zionist” as a license to intimidate or exclude.
Your election offers hope to Muslim children who have wondered whether their country fully accepts them. That’s important. But I ask you to consider the Jewish children wondering the same thing—and to use your new platform to help them feel a sense of belonging and safety too.
Respectfully,
Stuart J. Dow
