Jewish Democrats at U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s alma mater are signing on to a “Nonnegotiable” petition to pressure the former Wayne County health official on his anti-Israel views.
“Shoutout to the students at the University of Michigan who’ve been out on campus collecting signatures for Nonnegotiable!” the group posted to Instagram on Saturday.
“On a campus where Jewish students have faced harassment, threats, and pressure to hid who they are, these students are meeting the moment,” the post read. “These are young Jewish Democrats who were excited to cast their first votes for U.S. Senate this November. Instead, they’re facing an election where, as of now, there’s no candidate they can vote for. So they’re demanding better from our party’s leaders.”
The UM students join a campaign that already includes rabbis, cantors, and synagogue lay leaders that represent about 40,000 Jewish Michiganders, with prominent leaders including UM Regent Mark Bernstein, state Rep. Noah Arbit, D-West Bloomfield, former state Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton, D-Huntington Woods, and scores of other local current and former officials.
The group are lobbying for El-Sayed, and any other politician that wants its support, to agree to five “nonnegotiables”: Jewish safety, including for Zionist Jews; the right to define their own Jewish identity; Jewish sovereignty in Israel; welcoming full Jewish participation in civic life; and an affirmative vision for a better future in the Middle East.
“These are not high bars. They are commitments President Obama himself made, in word and deed,” the group wrote in a statement ahead of a planned El-Sayed campaign rally with the 44th POTUS on Oct. 24. “We urge him to ask Dr. El-Sayed to make them too, and to welcome Zionist Jews into the coalition that carried President Obama to victory in Michigan – twice.”
The nonnegotiable movement gains steam as El-Sayed has steadfastly refused to support Israel if elected to become the nation’s first Muslim senator.
During a debate with Republican former Congressman Mike Rogers last week, El-Sayed repeatedly refused to answer a question from moderator Rick Albin on whether Israel or Iran poses a bigger threat to America.
“I’m just going to say that that’s a ridiculous hypothetical,” El-Sayed said. “Our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran. We have watched as Iran has responded by bombing all kinds of countries in the Middle East and then choking off the world’s energy supply.”
“I don’t want to be pushed into a war by Israel, and I don’t want to be in a war with Iran,” he said, going on to argue both countries “have proven dangerous in their own way.”
“One, at risk of attacking us,” he said. “One, getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”
El-Sayed also made it clear he’s a no vote for any funding for Israel’s offensive or defensive weapons.
“I don’t want our tax dollars buying weapons for other countries,” he said. “I don’t know what’s so hard to understand about that. That’s a no.”
Rogers noted at the debate El-Sayed failed to acknowledge “the pain, the terrorism, the rape, the murders” on the third anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Rogers, a former U.S. Army lieutenant and FBI agent, told Michiganders he “staunchly” supports “the right to exist for the Jewish state, and the right to defend itself in a very difficult neighborhood.”
Throughout his campaign, El-Sayed has drawn heated criticism for his anti-Israel rhetoric, as well as his alliance with Hamas-supporting streamer Hasan Piker, whom he campaigned alongside on Michigan college campuses in April.
El-Sayed repeatedly targeted the American Israel Public Affairs Committee backing his primary opponent, proud Zionist Congresswoman Haley Stevens, D-Birmingham, refused to comment on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death in February, worked to justify a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack on West Bloomfield’s Temple Israel in March, and could not answer whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state when a launched a Jews for Abdul coalition in May.
The nonnegotiable movement isn’t the only Jewish coalition concerned about El-Sayed’s anti-Israel politics.
Even leaders with Jews for Abdul have called out “issues that Abdul has been less than effective in communicating,” as co-founder Steve Gold put it.
“I think there’s three issues … he could do a better job on,” Gold said in a mid-August organizing meeting.
“One is the Israel’s right to exist question, which I think needs to be answered yes, full stop, and then go on to explaining the nuances and the whatever,” Gold said.
“The second thing is his insistence on using the word genocide, with good reason,” he said. “It’s something that makes some Jews to stop as though he is denigrating the significance and importance of the Holocaust, which of course, he is not.”
“And the third is his, uh, statement that all aid to Israel, including things like Iron Dome, should be cut off,” Gold said, noting he’s “just talking about problems … (not) about whether they’re right or wrong or anything.”
“People stop listening when they say Israel doesn’t have a right to defend itself,” he said. “I think those are three things that turn off a lot of Jews.”
Victor Skinner, The Midwesterner
