Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed apologized to a group of Jewish voters on Saturday for a statement he made in March in response to a Hezbollah-inspired attack on a synagogue in West Bloomfield.
While at an event hosted by the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus, el Sayed said, “If my statement caused pain, I’m sorry. That’s not what I intended,” according to the New York Times. El Sayed came under fire in the spring for saying in a video statement that “hurt people hurt people” after a rifle-wielding Islamic terrorist drove a truck into the Temple Israel synagogue in what the FBI called a “targeted act of violence.”
Gunman Ayman Mohamad Ghazali drove through the halls of the synagogue with several explosives and a rifle in his vehicle before being killed in an exchange of gunfire with law enforcement on March 12. No one was hurt in the incident, including children attending the synagogue’s early childhood development program, which was in class that morning. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) later said the attack “was antisemitic” and stemmed from “hate, plain and simple.”
While Whitmer and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) strongly condemned the violence and urged Michiganders to call out antisemitism whenever they see it, el Sayed received blowback for tying Ghazali’s actions to military tensions between Israel and Lebanon.
“As an epidemiologist, I’ve spent my career studying the worst things that happen to people to understand how to stop them from happening,” el Sayed said in the statement. “And I’ll never forget one of the simplest lessons I learned while on my psychiatry rotation while in medical school: Hurt people hurt people. Violence is a cycle. Ayman Ghazali lost family, including two children, in an airstrike in Lebanon last week. They were innocent people. And then, in an evil act of displaced rage, he tried to take it out on innocent children who had nothing to do with the loss of the innocent children he lost, except that they share a faith.”
“I made a mistake,” he said Saturday to the Jewish group. “I should have issued a statement, of course condemning it, and it just should have been the full stop.” El Sayed also reportedly told attendees, “no one deserves to have their pain trampled on.”
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El Sayed has faced controversy over his anti-Israel views and campaigning alongside internet personality Hasan Piker. He is one of many socialist Democrats who have risen to prominence throughout the summer ahead of November’s midterm elections.
He faces off against Republican Mike Rogers in one of the nation’s highest-profile races. The two recently agreed to an Oct. 8th debate.