All three of the leading Democratic contenders hoping to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) condemned two antisemitic incidents targeting Chabad at Michigan State University this week, during the first days of Hanukkah. 

The first incident took place on Tuesday night when an individual “intentionally threw a rock” through a window of the Chabad Jewish Student Center at MSU in Lansing, Rabbi Kasriel Shemtov, executive director of Chabad Lubavitch of Michigan, told Jewish Insider. 

The following night, swastikas and the words “he’s back” were spray painted on the door of the same building. No one was in the building at the time of either incident. Law enforcement officials have confirmed that both incidents are being investigated as hate crimes.

The incidents, which occurred days after a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia left 15 dead — including a Chabad rabbi — prompted quick statements of condemnation from Democratic Senate candidates looking to replace Peters: Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed progressive candidate. 

In a statement to JI, Stevens said, “Acts of blatant antisemitism, like what we just saw at Michigan State, are unacceptable in Michigan and everywhere else. Jewish students at MSU — and all our universities — deserve to feel safe on campus. We must ensure our campuses are free of harassment and violence targeting the Jewish community.”

McMorrow, whose husband is the former president of MSU Hillel, told JI that the “safety of Jewish students on our campuses and in our communities is something that hits home for us…  I know how much this matters to our family and to this community.”

El-Sayed wrote on X, “Antisemitic violence like this has no place in Michigan. We stand together with our Jewish sisters and brothers against antisemitism and hate in all forms.” 

Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) also denounced the incidents, as did university officials.

“I condemn the vile antisemitic crime targeted at MSU’s Chabad Jewish Center. This hatred has no place in Michigan or anywhere else. My thoughts are with the Jewish community and the MSU campus during this time that should be filled with light not hate,” Peters wrote on X. 

Slotkin said, “As we see a rise in deadly acts of antisemitism around the world, this must be condemned left, right and center. Anti-semitism can start small and grow into something ever more dangerous.”

In a campus wide email, MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz wrote, “In the wake of unspeakable violence committed against the Jewish community in Australia, I was deeply troubled to learn of multiple incidents of antisemitism near our own campus in the form of vandalism against the university community’s Chabad Jewish Center. That this occurred during Hanukkah — a time centered on light, resilience and faith — only deepens the pain and concern felt by many.” 

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.

The State Executive Committee of the North Carolina Democratic Party passed a resolution last weekend calling for an arms embargo on Israel, along with a series of other anti-Israel resolutions, moves that Republicans are already planning to use against statewide candidates as a sign of the party’s leftward drift.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has already seized upon the resolutions as a political weapon against current and potential Democratic Senate candidates — including the race for the battleground seat of retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) — with pro-Israel voters.

“North Carolina Democrats like Roy Cooper, Jeff Jackson [and] Wiley Nickel are responsible for their Party’s unapologetic appeasement of pro-Hamas radicals,” NRSC spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez said in a statement, targeting the state’s former governor and former lawmakers, all moderates, with the same broad brush for not speaking out against the state party’s anti-Israel activity. 

“Anyone that supports Israel’s right to exist and defend itself must do whatever they can to make sure no North Carolina Democrat is elected to the U.S. Senate in 2026.”

The most prominent Democrats in the state have, thus far, been silent. Gov. Josh Stein; Cooper, the former governor and a likely Senate candidate; Nickel, a former congressman and current Senate candidate; and Jackson, the attorney general and a former congressman all did not respond to requests for comment.

The decision by the North Carolina Democratic Party’s leadership is another blow to the party’s Jewish Caucus — which faced internal opposition as it was forming — who argue that the resolutions are needlessly divisive and distract from what should be the core goal of the party: electing Democrats.

“The Jewish Caucus position is that we need to concentrate on getting a lot more Democrats elected, and we need to change the balance of things in the [North Carolina] House,” Perry Dror, North Carolina Democratic Party Jewish Caucus’ 2nd vice president, told Jewish Insider ahead of the weekend meeting. “It’s not going to do a thing to change the situation in the Middle East, it’s just going to divide the party and give all kinds of cannon fodder for the Republicans.”

The North Carolina Democratic Party also did not respond to a request for comment.

A source familiar with the proceedings at the State Executive Committee (SEC) meeting said that the final vote on the embargo resolution was close — a single-digit margin of victory out of hundreds of votes. Some members who had planned to vote against the resolutions were absent.

There was insufficient time for the committee to consider a series of other Israel-related resolutions, including a “Resolution for Democratic Unity,” which “condemns any and all acts of terrorism perpetrated Israel or Hamas” and “calls for the immediate release of Palestinian hostages taken by Israel,” in addition to the hostages being held by Hamas. Per meeting rules, since they were not considered, the resolutions were deemed to have been approved.

“A group of extremely vocal progressives were more interested in their issue, their singular issue, than they were with fighting for things that North Carolinians really are interested in, like what’s going to happen to Medicare and Medicaid, the price of housing, women’s reproductive rights,” Lisa Jewel, the president of the Jewish Caucus, told JI.

Jewel emphasized that the Jewish Caucus’ membership, totaling more than 500, is broad and is not in complete agreement on all issues pertaining to Israel, but the members largely agree that these resolutions will be harmful to the party. She said the Jewish Caucus has tried to work constructively with other groups pushing anti-Israel stances but has been rebuffed, and said party leadership needs to step up and take charge.

Jewel and other Jewish Caucus leaders emphasized that they want to see the party adopt a big-tent approach and focus on practical issues that affect North Carolina and local Democrats’ electoral prospects.

“I just need people to understand that antisemitism in North Carolina is double what it is nationwide. The antisemitic incidents are increasing, and they don’t get that. They don’t understand that their vote … is really affecting us,” Jewel said. “I really appreciate young peoples’ passions, but they don’t always think about what the repercussions are.”

Jewel attributed the issues in part to a lack of leadership from the party’s leaders, whom she said in an interview on Friday had seemed “flustered” by Israel and Middle East issues and took a back seat when they came up, rather than trying to bring party members together.

Caucus leaders said that the push for the anti-Israel resolutions had been growing for several years, and came to a head this year.

Resolutions like these are generated by local precincts and are passed up to the county, then congressional district, then state level, to the Resolutions Committee. The committee had a backlog of hundreds of resolutions to work through from both the current and previous year, which Amy DeLoach, the first vice president of the Jewish Caucus and a member of the Resolutions Committee, told JI before the weekend votes.

“It was literally an unachievable task,” DeLoach said. She said the Resolutions Committee chairs “did the best they could” but were facing “a group that were very persistent” in pressing to prioritize moving the Israel-related resolutions ahead to the full state party, rather than taking additional time to go through normal procedures and allow for further review.

DeLoach said she’s seen firsthand, as a state House candidate, the way that party resolutions can hurt Democratic candidates, blaming her own loss on Republicans tying her to a Progressive Caucus push to legalize drugs.

“These resolutions are nothing but a way to hamper the candidates, and the Jewish Caucus wants to do things that are going to push the Democratic Party forward,” DeLoach said.

Dror said that progressives, members of the Interfaith Caucus, as well as some members of the Muslim and Arab caucuses, “just nonstop harp on Israel.”

The chair of the party’s Interfaith Caucus, days after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, defended the attack as “retaliation” for a supposed growth in Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount.