Rabbis and other Jewish leaders have called on the Democratic Party to adopt a set of “nonnegotiable” principles on Jewish safety.
By Shula Rosen
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said Israel is neither an ally nor a friend of the United States, criticizing U.S. military assistance to the country and accusing it of drawing Washington into conflicts it should avoid.
“An ally that takes your money to push you into wars you shouldn’t be fighting is not an ally,” El-Sayed said in an ABC News interview when asked whether he considered Israel an American ally.
El-Sayed compared the relationship to a friend who “keeps bumming off [your kids’ money] and then talks about them behind their back and gets them into fights with their other friends.”
“What would you tell your kid?” he asked the reporter. “You’d probably tell them, ‘Maybe that’s not actually your friend.’”
“I think it’s time for us to realize that Israel is actually not our friend,” he concluded.
El-Sayed has also described Israel’s military actions in Gaza as “brutal” and criticized U.S. military aid to Israel.
His positions have drawn criticism from Jewish leaders and his Republican Senate opponent, Mike Rogers, ahead of the November midterm elections.
Jewish critics in Michigan have raised concerns over El-Sayed’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, as well as his initial remarks following a violent attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield.
Jewish Democrats have also criticized his association with commentator Hasan Piker and his rhetoric concerning the pro-Israel lobby.
Rabbis and other Jewish leaders have called on the Democratic Party to adopt a set of “nonnegotiable” principles on Jewish safety, citing concerns over El-Sayed’s positions on Israel.
El-Sayed has faced separate scrutiny over his family’s purported ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and reports that his sister-in-law, Miryam Jukaku, was involved in a federal terrorist watchlist lawsuit during the Obama administration.
El-Sayed rejected the allegations concerning Jukaku, saying she had done nothing wrong and suggesting Islamophobia contributed to her designation.
“You’ve got this system where folks are guilty until proven innocent because they’ve got different kinds of names, because of the infrastructure that people like [Michigan Republican Senate candidate] Mike Rogers set up,” he told Fox.
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