WASHINGTON — Michigan Senate hopeful Dr. Abdul El-Sayed finally apologized to Jewish Democrats for his response to the Michigan synagogue earlier this year — when he highlighted that the terrorist’s family members were killed in Israeli strikes.
El-Sayed expressed regret for his remark that “hurt people hurt people” after a madman rammed a truck with fireworks and gasoline into the daycare at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich. — a reference to the attacker’s family being killed in Lebanon.
“I made a mistake,” El-Sayed conceded at a Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus event on Saturday.
“I should have issued a statement, of course condemning it, and it just should have been the full stop.”
The Michigan Democrat said that he felt an apology was necessary over his response to the Temple Israel attack because his comments were “misconstrued.”
“My comments may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify,” later El-Sayed told reporters. “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”
On March 12, Ayman Mohamed Ghazali, who was originally from Lebanon, rammed a truck into a reform temple where some 100 children were present for preschool, before killing himself following a shootout with security.
None of the congregants were hurt, though one security officer was injured.
“I shudder to think through the emotions of the parents whose children were in the synagogue,” El-Sayed said in a video after the attack, calling it “heinous.”
“To my Jewish sisters and brothers, I want to reaffirm my commitment to your rights to worship, to learn, and to celebrate your faith.”
“Anti-semitism has no place in our communities, ever. Full stop,” he added, before explaining that a lesson he learned while studying epidemiology was that “hurt people hurt people.”
“Ayman Ghazali lost family, including two children, in an airstrike in Lebanon last week. They were innocent people.”
That was a reference to Israel’s strikes in Lebanon at the time. Israel fired off that volley of strikes on Hezbollah targets which came in retaliation for America’s and Israel’s assault on Iran.
El-Sayed’s comments at the time stirred a firestorm with many Jewish Americans.
Around that time, audio leaked of El-Sayed struggling over how to handle the death of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, due to fears of alienating Muslim voters.
Khamenei was the Shiite Muslim ruler of Iran; El-Sayed is a Sunni Muslim whose family is originally from Egypt.
The Michigan Democrat has been scrambling to unite his party against Republican Mike Rogers after a bruising primary fight against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.)
On Saturday, he once again refused to denounce or disavow far-left streamer Hasan Piker, though he has previously acknowledged having disagreements with the far-left streamer on certain issues.
El-Sayed stumped with Piker on the last day of his competitive primary.
“I am not interested in a conversation about a social media person in California,” El-Sayed vented to reporters when pressed about his ties to Piker.
Piker infamously claimed in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11,” before later, very begrudgingly, sort of conceding it was an “inappropriate” remark. He has since been seen with a framed copy of a front-page newspaper depicting the Twin Towers in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack
The multimillionaire socialist also defended the US-designated terrorist group Hezbollah, fawned over the “brave mujahideen” who injured outgoing Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), and argued that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack was a “direct consequence” of Israeli actions, adding that if the terror group engaged in rape, it “doesn’t change the dynamic for me.”
Piker has tried to imply that some of his controversial comments were jokes, but critics have been skeptical of that.
