Michigan’s Senate Primary Is About Israel | American Enterprise Institute
One political story transfixes the nation: today’s Senate primary in Michigan. Americans are watching intently to see who wins. Will it be Abdul El-Sayed, an insurgent left-winger, or Haley Stevens, a Congresswoman favored by the Democratic establishment?
The stakes are widely acknowledged. According to one analyst, the “socialist fever rage” is on the ballot. This is true but incomplete. El-Sayed’s economic radicalism—he backs Medicare for All and other socialist nostrums—is a small part of his campaign. Anti-Zionism dominates the rest of it. The contest between him and Stevens is about Israel.
To put it mildly, El-Sayed is running as an opponent of the world’s only Jewish state. He has called Israel “evil” and a “rogue state” and avers it’s no better than Hamas. He smeared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war criminal.” He employed a pro-Hamas staffer who’s been indicted for allegedly threatening Jews at the University of Michigan. He campaigned with notorious Jew-hater Hasan Piker and spouts anti-Semitism himself. “So long as our politicians continue to be bought off by AIPAC, do not be surprised when we fight wars that are in their best interest — to annex Lebanon or to do genocide in Gaza,” El-Sayed said. He’s also refused to say whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. He’s made his views on Israel manifestly clear to people in Michigan and across the country.
El-Sayed doesn’t just hold anti-Zionist views. He never misses an opportunity to espouse them. Day after day on the campaign trail, he’s attacked Israel with venom. Anti-Zionism is his defining attribute.
Not so of Stevens. Stevens has been relatively supportive of Israel throughout her time in the House of Representatives and voted against a recent amendment by Thomas Massie to cut military aid. Stevens has also criticized university leaders for appeasing pro-Palestinian protesters and endangering Jewish students. Unlike El-Sayed, she doesn’t obsess over the supposed depravity of AIPAC. “You want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans,” Stevens wrote in an X post directed at El-Sayed. Rather than issue blanket denunciations of Israel, Stevens directs her criticism at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She’s a pro-Israel Democrat by the standards of her party and has consistently distinguished herself from El-Sayed on this score.
Yet that may work against her. The Democratic Party’s pro-Israel constituency is collapsing. Four-fifths of Democrats now have an unfavorable view of Israel. Vehemently anti-Israel candidates like Melat Kiros are winning Democratic nominations in Congressional districts nationwide. The progressive Zionist, once a staple of American politics, is all but extinct. Whether Stevens can win on a pro-Israel platform is an open question.
In contrast, El-Sayed’s anti-Zionism is part of his appeal. El-Sayed can count on widespread support from anti-Israel progressive Democrats, who are disproportionately represented in college towns like Ann Arbor and East Lansing. The United Auto Workers, a political power player in the state that has become increasingly hostile to Israel, has endorsed El-Sayed. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have so pervaded the Michigan Democratic Party that Attorney General Dana Nessel, who’s Jewish, will skip the nominating convention this month out of fear for her safety. Today’s primary tests whether a pro-Israel Democrat can still win a statewide primary. If past is precedent, Stevens is hindered, not helped, by her views on Israel. The reverse is true of El-Sayed.
