As two Democratic Michigan Senate candidates compete for the votes of anti-Israel voters with accusations of genocide against the Jewish state, Abdul El-Sayed, is going after state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, as insufficiently and inauthentically critical of Israel.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), meanwhile, is solidifying her support for Israel, receiving an endorsement this week from Democratic Majority for Israel and calling herself a “proud pro-Israel Democrat [who] believe[s] America is stronger when we stand with our democratic allies, confront antisemitism and extremism, and keep our promises to our friends abroad and our working families here at home.”

With significant Arab and Muslim and Jewish constituencies, Israel policy issues are poised to play a significant role in Michigan’s Democratic primary next year.

El-Sayed entered the race as a vocal critic of Israel, while McMorrow, in recent months, has joined him in describing the war in Gaza as a genocide, as well as saying she would support efforts to cut off offensive weapons shipments to Israel.

El-Sayed, in a recent event at Michigan State University, criticized McMorrow for not taking that position sooner, describing allegations of genocide in Gaza as a matter of clear and incontrovertible fact. Video of the comments was published by the Michigan Advance.

He compared McMorrow’s position to someone taking months to decide that the sky is blue and saying, “let me give you five caveats about why it might not be blue.”

El-Sayed also suggested that McMorrow’s positions changed because she was seeking support from AIPAC, and only took a more critical stance on Israel after the group declined to support her. The far-left publication Drop Site alleged that McMorrow had been seeking an AIPAC endorsement earlier in the year and had authored a pro-Israel position paper. 

McMorrow’s campaign has denied that she completed a questionnaire for AIPAC and McMorrow said last month she would not accept the group’s support. AIPAC has previously endorsed Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who has maintained her position on Israel, in House races, but has not weighed in on the Senate race.

“When there’s 20,000 kids who died, that’s a genocide,” El-Sayed said in his remarks at Michigan State. “When people who are from the very country that committed — whose government committed that genocide say it’s a genocide, at some point you kind of just gotta be like, ‘Oh it’s a f***ing genocide.’ … “I don’t pretend that when 20,000 babies are murdered by our tax dollars, that there’s hemming and hawing about saying because it’s the truth.” El-Sayed was referring to numbers from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health indicating that almost 20,000 children and teenagers were killed in the war.

He suggested that McMorrow is trying to “package” herself as a progressive changemaker while the “substance” of her policies is “the same old politics.”

Asked last month whether the war in Gaza is a genocide, McMorrow said that it is.

“We have [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu trying to tell us what we’ve been seeing with our own eyes is not true,” McMorrow said. “It is true. And two things can be true at once. … The position of the United States should not be that we support Netanyahu with no check and balances.”

Asked about El-Sayed’s criticisms, McMorrow’s campaign referred Jewish Insider to those remarks.

On the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Israel, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat, sent a fundraising email to supporters that criticized Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza while ignoring the Hamas attack that precipitated it.

“Two years ago this month, Netanyahu’s military launched a ground invasion of Gaza,” the email begins. It does not mention Hamas, the Oct. 7 attacks or the ongoing hostage situation in any capacity, despite the date on which it was sent and the fact that the Israeli invasion of Gaza took place weeks after Oct. 7.

The email goes on to blame pro-Israel financial support to politicians for the continuation of the war.

“It has continued because politicians in both parties have chosen to send billions of our tax dollars to fund this senseless war — instead of demanding an immediate ceasefire,” the email continues. “And If you’re asking yourself, “Why on Earth are politicians in Washington continuing to add fuel to the fire?” the answer is money. AIPAC is funneling millions into campaigns in exchange for loyalty.”

El-Sayed issued a separate statement from his campaign account earlier in the day.

“All children deserve lives unburdened by hate, war, guns, bombs, kidnapping, or murder. All people deserve equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination,” the statement reads. “Hamas violated these principles in its heinous attack on October 7th. They killed 1,200 people and took dozens of hostages, many of whom have yet to be released. I condemned it then, and I condemn it now.”

The statement goes on to condemn Israel for committing “genocide on Gaza with our tax dollars” and demand that “international law must be enforced and those who have broken it must be brought to justice. And our government must stop sending blank checks to foreign militaries who violate it.”

An El-Sayed spokesperson said Wednesday that the Tuesday email “mistakenly went out yesterday” and that El-Sayed “has been clear and consistent: he holds equally valuable the lives of all innocent people and condemns violence against them.”

Michigan state Rep. Noah Arbit, a Jewish Democrat, said that the comments were “repugnant.”

“Abdul El-Sayed has demonstrated that he has a complete disregard not only for Israeli lives but for Jewish life, and completely disqualified himself from serving as U.S. Senator for MI. As a State Representative, I call on Michiganders to reject this bigoted campaign,” he said. “Fundraising off the anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, while 48 Jews are still captive in the bowels of hell in Gaza is akin to dancing in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.”

Arbit demanded an “an unconditional, immediate apology” to Michigan’s Jewish community. He said that the campaign’s assertion that the email had gone out mistakenly was insufficient.

“Mistakenly, but not accidentally,” he said Wednesday. “[El Sayed] owes an apology to Michigan’s Jewish community. This has nothing to do with legitimate criticisms of a country’s government or military and everything to do with dancing on the anniversary of a massacre.

El-Sayed is running in a hotly-contested Democratic primary for the Senate seat of retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI). He is facing Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), the favorite of party leaders who has been a supporter of Israel and outspoken voice against antisemitism during her Congressional career. 

Also running is state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who has sounded increasingly hostile towards the Jewish state as her campaign has progressed. On Monday, she said she considered Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide” — comments her campaign immediately promoted to Politico.

McMorrow condemned El-Sayed’s fundraising email.

“To send a fundraising pitch on October 7th without mentioning, much less condemning, Hamas and their horrific terrorist attack is beyond tone deaf,” McMorrow said. “It is fair to be critical of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. I have been. But sending a fundraising email on the two year anniversary that completely ignores the atrocities committed by Hamas was wrong and brings us no closer to a goal we all should share: releasing the hostages and ending the violence.”

Republicans view the Michigan Senate race as one of their top pickup opportunities, and have coalesced behind former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) in last year’s Senate contest.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, responded to the news by saying, “Abdul El-Sayed doesn’t just oppose Chuck Schumer as Senate Democrats’ leader, he opposes Schumer’s right to exist,” presumably referring to the fact that Schumer is Jewish.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), making his second bid for Michigan’s Senate seat, is leaning into his support for the Trump administration’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear program on the campaign trail. 

Rogers emphasized, in an interview with Jewish Insider last week, that he has long been suspicious and concerned about Iran’s nuclear program and other malign activities dating back to his time as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in the early 2010s, when he had access to highly classified information.

“I couldn’t have supported [the operation] more,” Rogers, who served in the House from 2001 to 2015, said. “I was for all of this when it wasn’t very cool to be for all of this.”

The former lawmaker said he believes that Iran was much closer to a nuclear weapon than many believe, noting that its development of advanced supercomputers would likely have allowed it to reliably simulate a nuclear weapons test, an undetectable alternative to actually testing a nuclear bomb.

“I believe, on the day that Trump went in, that they had all three components” of a nuclear weapon: highly enriched uranium, a weapon and a delivery system using a ballistic missile, Rogers said. “They just didn’t have them assembled.”

He said that the “urgency of which Israel undertook their mission” suggests to him that Iran was working to bring those three elements of a nuclear weapon together. 

Rogers added that the U.S. and Israel need to take seriously Iran’s threat to wipe out Israel if it obtains a nuclear weapon.

Rogers said that the destruction of much of Iran’s enrichment capacity — particularly the strikes on Fordow — and many of its missile launchers, as well as its anti-aircraft capabilities, put Iran on its back foot if it attempts to reconstitute its program. He predicted it would take Iran years to regain access to Fordow, if it attempts to do so.

“What I have said publicly is, I believe we should leave the option on the table for another round of attacks targeted at their nuclear capability,” Rogers continued. “I don’t care if it’s in uranium enrichment stockpiles, delivery equipment … there’s always the possibility you might find another centrifuge effort somewhere.”

He said that making clear that the U.S. is prepared to act again will help force Iran back to the negotiating table and rebut Iranian deception and stalling tactics in negotiations.

The U.S. strikes could create heated political dynamics in Michigan in the upcoming election cycle, as the war in Gaza did in the 2024 election, in the Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities. 

When speaking to Arab and Muslim voters, Rogers said he emphasizes the ways that the Iranian regime has hurt the Muslim world, saying it has killed many more Muslims and Americans than it has Jews and that its support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah has destabilized the region and undermined opportunity and prosperity.

“My argument is this may be the first step. I think this is the most consequential time in American, Israeli and Middle East politics in my lifetime, because I think the president set the tone for real peace,” Rogers said.

Rogers added: “I am against military adventurism, I think it’s a terrible idea for the country. What you saw here, and this is how I explain it to them — this is very surgical. … If you’re going to tout peace through strength, you have to show the strength path. Iran was undeterred up to this point.”

He described potential future talks with Iran as on a fundamentally different footing than they have been in the past: now, he argued, the debate is not over details like International Atomic Energy Agency inspection schedules, but a more comprehensive and permanent solution and peace.

Rogers added that he keeps his message on Middle East policy consistent regardless of whether he’s addressing Jewish or Muslim audiences.

“You can’t say one thing to one group and another thing to another. It never works,” Rogers said. “But if they know where you’re at and they can articulate why you’re there and why support of Israel is so important, both to me personally, but I think to the country … and Republicans, we talk about it too, that’s this debate, should we or shouldn’t we.” 

Rogers is looking like the early favorite to emerge as the GOP nominee for the seat of retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI). He is backed by Senate Republican leaders, as well as Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita. But Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI) is considering challenging Rogers in the primary. 

Rogers described himself as “one of the first folks” to raise alarms about the Joint Plan of Action, the precursor to the Obama administration’s nuclear deal, during his time in the House.

“I thought we were engaging and empowering Iran in a way that seemed to me that the Obama administration just didn’t understand, or didn’t want to understand, who Iran is, what their intentions are, and when they say they want to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, they actually mean it,” Rogers said.

He also said that he was among the first to sound the alarm about the Houthis, in 2013 or 2014.

“I said that if we don’t do something about the Houthis … we’re going to have a problem, and it’s going to be a problem for Israel, our greatest ally in the region, and our security as well,” Rogers said. He visited Yemen at the time and said he watched in real time as the group grew its capabilities and deepened its ties to Iran, at the same time that the situation in Yemen deteriorated.

“We couldn’t get people interested in [it] enough to understand what the threat was,” Rogers said. Going forward, “I would make sure that the Houthis understand what U.S. intention and Israeli intention is, if they continue to shoot at our sailors in our commercial enterprise in the region.”

“Those attacks on Fordow, that was the U.S. showing strength,” Rogers continued, invoking the motto of “peace through strength.” “Now let’s get to the peace part, but you also may have to reduplicate that in a few places to get people’s attention.”

Prior to his service in Congress, Rogers was an FBI agent, during which time he said he was involved in tracking down Iraqi agents inside the United States, during the first Gulf War. He said that there are some parallels between those “sleeper cells” and Iran’s more recent efforts to infiltrate and carry out operations in the United States.

“Here’s what I worry about — the difference between the Iraqi operations and what I know that Iran had the capabilities then as well,” Rogers said. “The Iranians will be, I think, more loyal to their mission than the Iraqis. … By the time [the Iraqis] lived here for 10 years, they thought, ‘This America thing is pretty good. I don’t know if I want to screw this up.’ I think the Iranian threat is much worse than the Iraqi threat at that time because they’re more passionate about it.”

He emphasized that Iran’s operations globally, including in the U.S., have been “pretty aggressive,” and serious in their planning and intentions and have disregarded potential civilian casualties.

“You need to reassign some agent manpower here to make sure you’re dealing with it” and get ahead of the Iranians before they can execute their plans, Rogers said. “Sometimes just including letting them know, ‘We know who you are, we know where you live, we know what you’re doing.’ That stuff can be a pretty good deterrence sometimes.”