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Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, insisted that Israel is “just as evil” as the terror organization Hamas on Sunday.
“You said the Israeli government is evil, do you think they’re just as evil as Hamas?” CNN’s Manu Raju asked El-Sayed on “Inside Politics.”
“Yes, killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil,” El-Sayed answered. “It’s not how evil is this one versus that one — Hamas: Evil, Israeli government: Evil. We can say both.”
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Abdul El- Sayed attends the Detroit Association of Black Organizations (DABO) Christmas party at the Bridge Center on Dec. 16, 2025, in Detroit, Michigan. (Monica Morgan/Getty Images)
El-Sayed added that he “absolutely” considers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be a war criminal for Israel’s actions during its war with Hamas.
“When you conduct a genocide, you’re a war criminal,” El-Sayed said.
Digital reached out to El-Sayed’s campaign for comment.
El-Sayed, who is currently running in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat in the 2026 midterms, has faced controversy in recent weeks as some of his old comments have resurfaced.
In July 2025, El-Sayed suggested during a town hall that political leaders need to do a better job to “understand” the motivation behind terrorists.
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Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed previously suggested there needed to be efforts to “understand” terrorist motivations. (Evan Cobb for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“I also think we need to be curious about why those things happen in the first place, like, [what] drives somebody to want to commit such a heinous act,” El-Sayed said. “I have to be a student of people’s pain. Like, that’s, that’s what I did in medicine. That’s what I try to do in politics. Like, what, what happens when people are in pain?”
He has also drawn backlash for campaigning with far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has made his own share of inflammatory comments over the years. Among them included Piker’s claim that Hamas was “a thousand times better than the fascist settler colonial apartheid state” of Israel.
He doubled down on the comparison during an episode of “Pod Save America.”
MICHIGAN DEMOCRAT DEFENDS APPEARING WITH HASAN PIKER, DISTANCES HIMSELF FROM PODCASTER’S CONTROVERSIAL REMARKS
Abdul El Sayed, left, has defended associating with Hasan Piker, right. (Evan Cobb for The Washington Post via Getty Images; Dia Dipasupil/FilmMagic)
“I’ve also said I’m a harm-reduction voter,” Piker said. “I’m a lesser evil voter and, therefore, I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time because I’m looking at the situation as a paramilitary organization that has a political party as well, a political bureau as well that is entirely comprised not as an alien force but of orphaned children that have, you know, had their parents killed by an apartheid state that has been dominating the lives of Palestinians for 80 years at this point and have done a genocide at this point as well.”
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El-Sayed has defended associating with Piker.
