Rabbis with the Nonnegotiable campaign said Tuesday that Abdul El-Sayed hasn’t done enough to disavow an antisemitic ad by an outside group supporting him. And they expressed broader fears about political alienation amid the party’s embrace of El-Sayed.

The Michigan Democratic Senate nominee’s campaign issued a statement on Monday noting that the ad was not produced by his campaign and that the group responsible, Rebellion PAC, doesn’t speak for him or his team.

Rabbi Aaron Starr, one of the original leaders of the Nonnegotiable Michigan effort, said on a call with reporters that the El-Sayed campaign’s rhetoric has worsened since the Nonnegotiable campaign began, and said that El-Sayed “has distanced himself from the … commercial, but he has not disavowed it.”

He said that the ad’s message blaming Israel and the Jews “for seemingly all of the world’s problems … does echo some of the themes that he’s put forward,” that U.S. support for Israel is to blame for financial troubles at home.

Starr also condemned an ad produced by El-Sayed’s own campaign that highlights criticism of GOP nominee Mike Rogers by antisemitic right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson.

Starr told Jewish Insider that he felt the El-Sayed campaign’s response to the Rebellion PAC ad fit a pattern of partial apologies and condemnations, like El-Sayed’s walk-back of his comments following the Temple Israel terrorist attack that “hurt people hurt people.”

“He’s not discrediting the commercial, he’s just distancing himself from it,” Starr said. “Now I appreciate that he’s distancing himself from it, but it’s just not enough. We have to condemn this kind of language, and I’m mindful that he’s engaged in similar language on his own about these false equations between America and Israel’s strategic allyship and the real suffering of Americans in Michigan and around the country.”

Starr said he’s also worried that the Jewish community will be blamed if El-Sayed loses the election, noting that there are “a lot of communities within Michigan who are not feeling heard by the El-Sayed campaign.”

Several other rabbis from around the country who have recently joined the Nonnegotiable effort also spoke on the call. They said El-Sayed’s campaign — and particularly support from prominent national Democrats such as former President Barack Obama — has created a deep fear of political alienation.

Rabbi Marc Israel of Tikvat Israel Congregation in Rockville, Md., who also serves as a co-chair of J Street’s clergy cabinet but spoke in a personal capacity, said that Obama’s appearance with El-Sayed “really captures what my biggest concern is” — that an El-Sayed victory would mean that Jews and supporters of Israel no longer have a place in the Democratic Party.

“On the political level, I am very scared that the Jewish community is going to become orphaned in America and not have a political home,” Israel said. “I think that President Obama being there without mentioning any of these concerns or issues or acknowledging it really speaks to that concern.”

Other rabbis on the call noted that Obama’s appearance with El-Sayed came alongside recent comments by the former president in Belfast that Israel’s security policy had “ceded moral ground” and that Israel’s founding had taken land from Palestinians who want their “land back.”

Rabbi Debra Newman Kamin, a past president of the Rabbinical Assembly, said that the ramifications of El-Sayed’s candidacy and its refusal to engage with the concerns of the Nonnegotiable campaign are “painful and frightening” and reverberate across the country and throughout the Democratic Party.

“For those of us — two-time voter for President Obama — to see other people line up to support this kind of rhetoric is really very terrifying, and as I said, would have just been unthinkable,” Newman Kamin said.

Rabbis from outside Michigan also emphasized that the rhetoric and outcome of the Michigan Senate race have spillover impacts that are affecting their own communities as well.

Rabbi David Ingber of Romemu and 92Y in New York said that the action of a potential U.S. senator “affects me and my constituency … regardless of where we are” and that “the language that political leaders normalize travels far beyond any one state.”

He said that his community feels “afraid” and is “terrified” of where El-Sayed’s campaign might go next.

“The El-Sayed campaign’s decision to feature Tucker Carlson is absolutely appalling,” Ingber said. “A candidate that is asking Jewish voters to trust him has chosen to amplify a man who has trafficked in rhetoric that endangers Jews, that campaign should own its decision and take the ad down immediately.”

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback of the Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles said that El-Sayed’s “rhetoric contributes to an atmosphere of hostility towards Jews that endangers Jewish lives … wherever they are found. Whether or not that is his intention, words have consequences, especially when spoken by those seeking public office.”

The rabbis on the press call also uniformly condemned Islamophobic rhetoric that has been deployed against El-Sayed.