At the time, El-Sayed said that “violence is a cycle” and that “hurt people hurt people.”
By JNS Staff
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a former Detroit health director and the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, apologized on Saturday for his response to the March 12 attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich.
The attacker, who rammed the synagogue with a car and shot at it, reportedly lost relatives in Israeli strikes in Lebanon. The Israeli military said that two of his brothers, who were killed in the strikes, were members of Hezbollah.
El-Sayed decried the attack at the time and said that “violence is a cycle” and that “hurt people hurt people,” CNN reported.
“My comments might have been misconstrued to be justifying something I did not intend to justify,” El-Sayed told reporters on Saturday, according to the outlet. “To anybody who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”
“We condemned that terrorist attack. We condemned it outright,” he said, according to CNN. “What I was trying to do is offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context, and you don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain.”
CNN reported that “notably absent from El-Sayed’s remarks onstage Saturday was an attack on one of his most frequent targets during the primary: AIPAC” and that “he pointed to more than $60 million spent against him during that race, but did not mention the group responsible for that spending by name.”
Former congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican running against El-Sayed, stated that “after relying on his long-held antisemitic beliefs to win the primary, Abdul El-Sayed is trying to con Michiganders into thinking his beliefs have changed.”
“Let me be clear: they have not. Abdul has had six months to apologize for his incredibly horrific remarks regarding the Temple Israel attack,” Rogers stated. “Instead, he chose to surround himself with terrorist sympathizers and some of the most notable antisemites in the country. It’s too little, too late, Abdul. Michiganders see you for exactly who you are: A conman.”
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