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El-Sayed doubles down on Israel 'genocide' charge as Michigan Senate race goes to the wire
In a 60 Minutes interview aired two days before the election, Michigan's Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said Israel 'did a genocide,' questioned U.S. military aid and called for Palestinian self-determination. Republican Mike Rogers said his rival's language is wrong.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in Michigan's closely watched U.S. Senate race, used a CBS 60 Minutes interview aired Sunday, Nov. 1, to repeat his charge that Israel committed genocide in Gaza and to call for a rethink of U.S. support for the country, two days before an election that could decide control of the Senate.
"The State of Israel did a genocide. I don't think that's disagreeable," El-Sayed said, adding that human rights groups inside Israel had reached the same conclusion and that it was "deeply problematic" that Americans could not debate how their money was spent.
Israel denies committing genocide. El-Sayed's Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, rejected the charge outright. "His language is wrong," Rogers told 60 Minutes. "I passionately defend Israel's right to defend itself and to exist as a Jewish state. That sets me at odds with my opponent right off the bat."
'I don't pay my taxes to buy another country a bomb'
El-Sayed, who is campaigning on an arms embargo on Israel alongside "Medicare for All," framed foreign military aid as a pocketbook issue, saying the money should go to schools, roads, health care and child care instead.
He has made the argument a centerpiece of his closing pitch. At an Oct. 29 rally in Kalamazoo he said taxpayers should know their money "is going to be spent on you and your kids rather than dropping bombs on somebody else and their kids," and in earlier interviews he tied $5 gasoline to a U.S. war with Iran that he says Israel's prime minister pushed for.
'If you see a bear'
Asked about Israel's status as a U.S. ally, El-Sayed reached for an analogy he has used before: a friend who insists on poking a bear may not really be a friend. "We've got to really rethink the nature of this relationship based on a position of principles," he said.
In an ABC News interview released last week, he went further, saying "Israel is not actually our friend" and arguing that an ally that pulls the U.S. into wars "is not an ally." Michigan state Rep. Noah Arbit, a Democrat, said he would not vote for El-Sayed after those remarks.
The 'right to exist' question
Rogers says El-Sayed refuses to acknowledge Israel's right to exist. El-Sayed turned the question around, saying he is never asked whether Palestine has a right to exist or whether Israel has a right to U.S. tax dollars.
According to El-Sayed, Palestine has a right to exist, and so does Israel "if there is a shared understanding." He said he would back whatever arrangement Palestinians and Israelis choose on equal terms, whether two states, one shared state or another model, but that the process must start with Palestinian self-determination, which he said U.S. policy has never respected.
A split on the left
The Israel issue has split Michigan Democrats in the campaign's final days. Rep. Haley Stevens, whom El-Sayed beat in the August primary by less than a percentage point, endorsed Rogers on Sunday, citing her disagreement with El-Sayed on Israel policy. Rogers has said El-Sayed's rhetoric feeds antisemitism; El-Sayed, the 42-year-old son of Egyptian immigrants, says that when it comes to standing up for Jewish Americans, "I will be right there."
Michigan has not elected a Republican senator in decades, and the race between El-Sayed and the 63-year-old Rogers is seen as one of a handful that could decide which party controls the Senate after Tuesday's vote.
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