We’ve all been there. You’re watching a political debate, or maybe just “Jeopardy!,” when the candidate/contestant stalls on the obvious answer to a softball question.
“SAY THIS!!” you shout at the television. “SAY THIS!!” There’s nothing more frustrating than the fact that they can’t hear you.
I had one of those moments the other day while watching the debate between Democratic Senate contenders Abdul El-Sayed and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens.
El-Sayed hoped to make the night all about the many millions the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is pouring into Stevens’ campaign. The question he raised was why the group would spend so much money to help Stevens win the primary.
Stevens scampered into her talking point shell and avoided the obvious answer. So I screamed it at my screen.
“Because they think you’re an antisemite,” I shouted so loud I was shocked Stevens couldn’t hear me on the Fox 2 set 15 miles away. “Because you travel with supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah!”
“Because you make excuses for terror!” “Because they want to beat you!”
That shouldn’t shock anyone. The mission of AIPAC is to advocate for the well-being of Israel and a mutually beneficial relationship between our two countries. Working against the election to one of the highest offices in the land of someone who hates Israel is in line with that purpose.
A companion objective of AIPAC is to ensure antisemitism doesn’t gain a significant foothold in this country. Helping deny a national platform to a man who stands on the stage with confirmed antisemites is essential to that work.
No one would object if the NAACP spent whatever it took to defeat a racist in a Senate contest. Why is it so objectionable that AIPAC is going all out to block a candidate whose views are an abomination to Jews?
AIPAC believes it has a solid case against Abdul El-Sayed.
Last spring, he appeared at rallies with online provocateur Hasan Piker, who is under fire for spewing anti-Jewish tropes, which he has done for years. Piker also said, “America deserved 9/11.”
The president of the centrist think tank Third Way, Jonathan Cowan, wrote to El-Sayed to warn him about associating with Piker and to ask him to tell Michigan voters whether he aligns with Piker’s views. Guilt by association may be unfair, but it also can be informative. El-Sayed should have known who Piker was before he embraced him.
El-Sayed has equivocated on a direct answer to the question of whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. The Jewish Democratic Council of America condemned El-Sayed for characterizing the government of Israel as being just as evil as Hamas, the terrorist group that butchered and raped Israelis in the Oct. 7, 2023, raid that sparked the Gaza war.
After the terrorist attack on Temple Israel by a Dearborn Heights man with family ties to Hezbollah, El-Sayed explained away the motivation by observing, “Hurt people hurt people.”
While hounding Stevens for her AIPAC donations, El-Sayed is benefiting from a pro-Palestinian PAC supported by his father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, who has been a leader of the Islamic Society of North America, a group with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. The United States has designated some Muslim Brotherhood branches as terrorist organizations.
If AIPAC and other Jewish organizations don’t spend a bundle to beat a man with these views and connections, then who will stand between the American people and a hateful ideology that threatens to embed itself in the government of the United States?
nfinley@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: AIPAC’s spending to defeat El-Sayed is good for America | Finley
Reporting by Nolan Finley, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Nolan Finley, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
