My Jewish friends voted for Abdul El Sayed
Letter from Michigan
Some of my Jewish friends voted for Abdul El-Sayed. He may be my next senator. I feel betrayed–and scared for Israel.
On election morning, I ran into a good friend on a street downtown. Kenneth told me he was on his way to vote. I told him I’d voted already.
“Not for El-Sayed?” he asked.
“Nothing could make me vote for El-Sayed!” I replied, surprised by my own intensity. I knew from past comments that he had.
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and then we said goodbye.
A lifelong Michigan resident, I had steeled myself to the likelihood that “Abdul”–the Israel-bashing Abdul El-Sayed–would win the Democratic Senate nomination, and not his sympathetic-to-Israel opponent, Congresswoman Haley Stevens. When the Associated Press finally called the race, my first reaction was relief that El-Sayed had triumphed by just a single percentage point. The polls had predicted he’d do much better.
The comfort was fleeting. El-Sayed may become my state’s next senator.
He’s a charismatic progressive, backed by Bernie Sanders. He’s dodged questions about whether Israel has a right to exist, and wants to end military aid to the Jewish state.
When AIPAC poured a record $30 million into fighting his candidacy, El Sayed cleverly turned the tables. After one poll correctly showed that his support was ebbing, he implied that the pro-Israel political action committee had funded it. He sneered that Congresswoman Stevens was a “walking suit with a fat AIPAC bank account.”
I’m writing this the day after the election. No one’s published a poll breaking down Michigan’s Jewish vote. But in my progressive college town, 61 percent of Democrats voted for El-Sayed.
This is in tune with American academia’s decades-long antipathy toward Israel. Every year, it seems, either the University of Michigan’s faculty or students call for divestment from companies they believe are profiting from the war in Gaza.
My Jewish friends who championed El-Sayed have long identified with the Democratic Party’s leftist wing. When the El-Sayed signs began appearing on their lawns, I kept my mouth shut. These are smart, kind people, mostly old friends, and when we get together, we avoid discussions of Israel. They know that while I, too, despise Netanyahu, and his Arab-hating ministers, I don’t share their overall disdain toward the world’s one Jewish country. I’m passionate that Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. I want a regime change–Netanyahu’s gotta go–but I don’t want American aid stopped. In the wake of El-Sayed’s victory, and the real possibility he may be our man in Washington, I feel like shouting at Kenneth and the others, “What have you done?” (Some of my non-Jewish friends voted for El-Sayed, but, irrationally or not, I don’t feel the same sense of betrayal.)
Now, I’m staring at two sobering choices in the November elections. As senator, El-Sayed could be Israel’s most formidable American enemy. His opponent, Mike Rogers, is pro-Israel, endorsed by Trump.
I have a good friend in Israel, an American who long ago made Aliyah. Shira understands the rapid and dangerous growth of anti-Israel sentiment in the United States. But from her comments and from what I read, many other Israelis don’t appear to grasp how badly the Gaza war has damaged Israel’s standing.
Israelis should be looking closely at the Michigan Democratic primary results. The El-Sayed victory may be the most significant advance warning to date of America’s turn against Israel.