Abdul El-Sayed
D · U.S. Senate, Michigan · Tier 5/6
Tier 5/6, between “Critical on most positions” and “Most critical of Israel / supports Palestine”
Refuses AIPAC; backs a full arms embargo, including defensive systems; ‘I don’t think that our taxpayer dollars … ought to be going to bomb children.’ Since winning the August primary he has softened his tone, and observers on both sides have noticed: JTA reported in late August that he had “minimized some of his harsh critiques of Israel in his stump speeches” and issued a statement distancing himself from the streamer Hasan Piker; in October CNN reported that he “talks less about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee” and had privately asked Piker to stop; and in a September Middle East Eye column the anthropologist Nazia Kazi wrote from the left that “Since the primary, El-Sayed has made one concession after another, each a retreat from his criticism of Israel and its lobby.” He backed the 2024 uncommitted movement, then endorsed and campaigned for Harris once Biden withdrew; Harris endorsed him in Detroit in September 2026. Asked about Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, he challenges what the term means: “The question becomes,” he told an audience, in remarks quoted in a May 2026 Washington Examiner opinion column, “how do you sustain democracy if you don’t have a Jewish majority? And then to say it’s Jewish by power, are there particular offices that have to be held by Jewish people? If so, what kind of Jewish people?” He also recasts the existence question as one of money — Israel “doesn’t have a right to my tax dollars.” In a July 2026 CNN interview quoted by Newsweek, El-Sayed said: “I would consider them a rogue state. It’s a state, and it deserves to be treated in accordance with how it violates human rights and international law. And we are definitely not doing that right now.” Asked by CNN in July 2026 whether one could be a Zionist and a progressive, he said, “Every definition of a Jewish state ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every single one,” and, pressed by CNN’s Kasie Hunt on whether Israel has a right to exist, he answered, “The question of Israel’s existence is not a question”; “I’m not going to play this gotcha game about whether or not it has a right to exist.” The argument goes back at least to 2021: in a May 2021 column on his Substack, quoted in part by CBS News in October 2026, he wrote that “Israel is destroying the two-state solution it claims to support” and set out an alternative, “a one-state solution, which would grant Palestinians full rights in the current Israeli state,” without choosing between the two. In September 2026, with the general election under way, Jewish Insider reported “recent efforts to mend fences with Jewish and pro-Israel Democrats in Michigan” and a private meeting with the rabbis of Temple Israel, and at a Fox 2 Detroit forum in mid-September he said “every child in the Holy Land, Palestinian or Jewish, deserves to grow up without worrying about whether or not their life is going to be upended by war or apartheid or genocide or terrorism.” “We’re not going to agree on Israel,” he told CNN in early October. “We’re going to vehemently disagree, but we can disagree agreeably.” His positions have not moved. His campaign site still backs “an immediate arms embargo on Israel” and rejects “the false differentiation between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ weapons,” and in a podcast interview released in late September, pressed by two hosts over the word genocide, he said “I’m unwilling to bend my principle around what I believe.” At the October 8, 2026 debate with Rogers, asked whether Israel or Iran is the greater threat, he called it a “ridiculous hypothetical” because “Our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran,” said “I don’t consider an ally a country that takes us to wars we don’t need to fight,” and, pressed on whether he would send defensive weapons if Israel were attacked, said he does not want the U.S. “buying weapons for other countries” (JTA; NBC News). When AIPAC’s super PAC began mailing against him in the general election, he answered on social media, as Common Dreams quoted him on October 10, 2026: “Why do they hate me? Because I want to keep your tax money here to spend on your kids rather than spend it to kill kids somewhere else.” Pressed again by NBC’s Tom Llamas on October 14, 2026, he said Iran is “a dangerous threat” but that “There is actively more war in the world because of what Israel is pushing us into,” and that he would rather spend the money paid for bombs “on our schools here.” Asked by MS NOW on October 15, 2026 whether his objection was to Netanyahu or to Israel itself, he said “Netanyahu is one part of it, but the Israeli military has done heinous things, like heinous things, full war crimes, genocide,” and that “The government of Israel has done nothing but use us”; asked whether a new prime minister would change his view, he said “Let’s see who the next prime minister is,” adding that “structurally, there are a lot of issues with that ostensible allyship.” In both the NBC and MS NOW interviews he tied the Iran war to Israel’s aims in Lebanon: “Israel had very clear war aims. They wanted the annexation of southern Lebanon,” he told NBC, and to MS NOW he said, “We’re paying more in gas. We’re paying more in groceries so that they could help to clear the air to try and annex southern Lebanon.” In an ABC News interview aired October 19 he went further: “I think it’s time for us to realize that, like, Israel is not actually our friend,” saying the U.S. is “running cover for a country that did genocide, that does apartheid on a daily basis” at “the U.N., ICC, ICJ” while “spending billions of dollars a year to subsidize their military”; pressed to condemn Iran’s government, he said it had “engaged in horrific acts” and that he condemns many of its actions, then added, “I condemn the genocide that Israel has done. I condemn the apartheid too. I condemn the attack on democracy that Iran has done.” The same week he mailed Jewish voters a letter, paid for by the Michigan Democratic Party and quoted by Jewish Insider, pledging “I am committed to protecting all Michigan Jews against hatred and injustice” and calling antisemitism “a scourge,” and JTA reported that the campaign had hired a Jewish outreach director. At the final debate on October 21, where Israel drew less attention than in earlier debates, he tied Rogers’s backing for the Iran war to AIPAC: “that’s what you get when you have an AIPAC-backed politician” (JTA). In a New Michigan Media roundtable with Michigan ethnic-press editors, published by The Arab American News on October 22, 2026, he asked for the votes of those who want someone “to invest your money here rather than send it abroad to kill or maim people who might be related to you in the south of Lebanon or in Gaza or in the West Bank or anywhere else.” On October 23, citing reports of $9 million in late AIPAC-linked spending against him, his campaign launched a “BEAT AIPAC AGAIN” fundraising drive, and he posted: “AIPAC is set to put millions more dollars into the race to try and defeat our movement. We beat over $30 million in AIPAC spending in the primary...help us beat them again.” Speaking at an October 24 Detroit rally with Barack Obama, he said the fight was “not just about fighting the military-industrial complex or [AIPAC]” but for families at a Detroit elementary school “that deserve our money to be spent on them rather than dropping bombs somewhere else.” After a rally in Wyandotte on October 28, asked by reporters about a Rebellion PAC ad that tied grocery prices to U.S. military aid to Israel, which his campaign had already disowned, he said “That has nothing to do with our campaign. It’s certainly not what I want to be talking about right now,” and widened the point: tax money should go “to build schools and opportunity here, rather than sent abroad to drop bombs on anybody.” “I don’t think we should be funding foreign militaries generally,” he said. “That’s Israel. It’s also Egypt. It’s also Saudi Arabia and Qatar and UAE” (AP). At a late-October Detroit stop with Sen. Raphael Warnock, answering a pro-Rogers ad that said he “cared more about the West Bank than west Detroit,” he said: “First of all, it’s not called ‘west Detroit’; it’s the West Side. The reason we can’t rebuild our schools on the West Side is because [Rogers] keeps sending bombs to destroy schools in the West Bank” (Word in Black, Oct 28).
Held at 5/6: a position questioning Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, with hedging around it. Since the primary he has softened his tone, as observers on both sides have noticed (an apology for his “hurt people hurt people” remark after the Temple Israel attack, distance from the streamer Hasan Piker, less talk of AIPAC), but none of it has moved a position. His record has nearly everything found at the Tier 6 end — a full arms embargo including defensive systems, a complete end to the $3.8B in annual US military aid (“unconditional foreign military aid should be illegal”), Gaza as “apartheid, at minimum genocide,” and, in June 2026, the first-ever JVP Action endorsement of a US Senate candidate. His position on Israel’s legitimacy is declining to affirm Israel as a Jewish state — he challenges what the term means, asking “how do you sustain democracy if you don’t have a Jewish majority?” and, of a state that is “Jewish by power,” “what kind of Jewish people?” — and, asked by CNN in July 2026 whether one could be a Zionist and a progressive, answering that “Every definition of a Jewish state ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every single one,” while saying plainly that “Israel exists.” A clean 6 needs that position with no hedging, and his record carries two hedges. He pairs it with “self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike,” a frame compatible with two states, and JTA reported in October that he would recognize Israel’s identity as a Jewish nation-state only if Israelis and Palestinians jointly agree to it. And he endorsed and campaigned for Harris in 2024 after calling the assault a genocide in October 2023 — “It’s why I campaigned for her,” he said, adding that he had worked with the campaign “to try to move on that issue” — a lapse that weighs against the firm, unhedged stance a clean 6 needs. Harris’s 2026 endorsement changed none of his positions, and neither has his general-election outreach to Jewish and pro-Israel Democrats: he still backs an immediate arms embargo, in late September defended the word genocide on air, and at the October 8 debate would not say he would send Israel even defensive weapons if it were attacked; on October 19 he told ABC News that “Israel is not actually our friend.” As of the October 21 final debate he had not publicly answered Nonnegotiable Michigan, a campaign of Michigan rabbis and Jewish Democrats asking him to affirm that “Jewish sovereignty in Israel is nonnegotiable.” BDS by name is absent. The July answer comes close to rejecting a Jewish state outright, and his 2021 columns show the argument is years old, so he could easily be a 6; what holds him at 5/6 is that his later words, as JTA reported them in October, set a condition rather than a refusal, that he has never said anti-Zionist, one state or BDS in his own words, and the Harris lapse. Dropping that condition, or an anti-Zionist or BDS position in his own words, would carry him to a clean 6.
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elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).