Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Friday rejected an appeal from Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) for him to publicly condemn an antisemitic ad in support of his campaign, which Stevens had made a condition of appearing at a joint event on Sunday.

Instead, El-Sayed attacked Stevens, his former Democratic primary opponent, days before the general election.

Federal prosecutors in Detroit charged four more people in an alleged campaign of intimidation against Jewish organizations, University of Michigan leaders and businesses perceived to have ties to Israel, bringing the total number of defendants in the case to 12. 

The latest defendants — Henry David MacKeen-Shapiro, 23; Aaron Hunter Vonbargen, 25; Joseph Mark Fisher, 23; and Srishti Tarana Sharma, 23 — are accused of participating in the campaign targeting the Jewish Federation of Detroit, university leadership, campus law enforcement personnel and several businesses. Two were arrested this week, while the other two remain at large. 

In a screaming rant on his livestream on Friday, antisemitic influencer Hasan Piker compared the heavily Jewish community of West Bloomfield in the Detroit suburbs to a Ku Klux Klan neighborhood, describing it as full of Jewish supremacists. Piker’s monologue led Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed to condemn Piker’s comments as “inappropriate” without speaking out against Piker himself.

Piker, while watching a news segment about West Bloomfield and a group of canvassers for El-Sayed in the district, said, “I don’t think this is insensitive to say — this is the equivalent of going to that like KKK neighborhood to stump for a Black candidate who’s running expressly … to abolish anti-miscegenation laws.”

He said that, while the Jewish community in West Bloomfield might be aesthetically different, “the supremacist attitude underlying their worldview is identical. … It’s racial supremacy. It’s Jewish supremacy.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani held a closed-door meeting at Gracie Mansion on Friday with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), as the Silicon Valley congressman looks to build support among Israel critics ahead of a potential 2028 presidential run.

The meeting — which Mamdani’s team announced to the public only minutes before it began — marks Khanna’s latest effort to network with high-profile opponents of the Jewish state, a campaign that has seen Khanna team up with a range of Israel critics, from former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to scandal-plagued former Senate candidate Graham Platner in Maine, who withdrew from the race this summer amid allegations of sexual assault. 

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), in a lengthy statement on Friday morning, conditioned her support for Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed on his willingness to condemn an antisemitic ad from one of his allies blaming Israel for the price of groceries. The ad was produced by Cenk Uygur, an El-Sayed supporter and the uncle of Hasan Piker.

In her statement, Stevens also said El-Sayed’s attempt to distance himself from the ad without condemning its substance was insufficient — and added that he needs to apologize for the ways his own rhetoric throughout the campaign has followed the same arguments from the ad.

Bahrain is preparing to host senior diplomats and defense officials from around the world beginning Friday for the annual Manama Dialogue at a moment when the kingdom is grappling with the economic and security challenges tied to the war with Iran. 

The three-day regional security conference, organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, is expected to draw delegations from more than 50 countries, with discussions focused on regional security, defense cooperation and the political and economic consequences of the conflict. 

Exactly 78.6 miles.

That’s how many miles the Granoff family — Marty, 90; his son, Michael, 57, an American-Israeli tech entrepreneur; and his grandson Avi, 22 — will log on Sunday at the New York City Marathon, as the three generations pound the city streets running side by side by side.

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s policies and rhetoric have been flashpoints for the current Israeli government in its relations with the world and Diaspora Jewry, sanctioned by several European countries that accused them of encouraging settler violence and a target of the Biden administration, which also considered punitive measures.

But in Israel, the ministers’ bases of support have largely continued to back them; the international condemnation may have even prompted the men to dig in their heels. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly said that he will continue his partnership with them as he tries to cobble together a ruling coalition.