Michigan's Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel is voicing concerns about her party’s Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, saying his response to the attempted terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue appeared to make excuses for "domestic terrorism" as she warns about increasing anti-Israel sentiments in her party. Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general since 2019, spoke at length in an interview with The Atlantic’s David Frum about her position that she doesn’t feel safe as a Jewish person attending her own state party’s convention due in part to "an enormous amount of anti-Semitism within the Democratic Party." Nessel specifically took issue with El-Sayed’s response to the synagogue attack in Michigan earlier this year where federal investigators say a gunman inspired and radicalized by Hezbollah crashed into the place of worship seeking to kill as many Jewish people as he could. "But, you know, the reaction to it, obviously there’s a lot of people who were quick to call this out.
But, you know, I think most concerning, of course, was the statement that our nominee for U.S. Senate made, which was that ‘hurt people hurt people,’" Nessel explained. "And a lot of us perceived that as sort of making excuses for somebody who sought to murder over 100 pre-K schoolchildren.
And that’s the kind of mentality that bothers me a lot." MICHIGAN'S DEMOCRATIC AG REFUSES TO ATTEND UPCOMING CONVENTION OVER HARASSMENT CONCERNS Nessel went on to reflect on how she responded to the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre by visiting a Dearborn mosque, wearing a hijab out of respect and unequivocally condemning Islamophobia. She contrasted that response with El-Sayed’s reaction to the Temple Israel attack. "I didn’t try to get into, like, what were the motivations of the person who killed these people, and did he have mental-health issues?" Nessel said.
"Did he have bad experiences with Muslims? I just condemned it unequivocally, and I think that’s what people should have done with Temple Israel. You can’t make excuses for that kind of domestic terrorism." Nessel credited El-Sayed for his outreach to Jewish leaders in recent months, but expressed the belief that he should publicly retract his comments in the aftermath of the attack.
ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE REACHES DEADLIEST LEVEL SINCE 1994, NEW GLOBAL REPORT FINDS "I think privately, he will say that he regrets having made those remarks," Nessel said. "But here we are, it’s almost the end of of August, and he still has not withdrawn those statements and said, I misspoke, or, I now recognize the harm that I caused by making those statements. And it has me concerned that he really stands by them." Nessel urged El-Sayed to acknowledge he was wrong, listen to Jewish stakeholders and publicly change course, as she said she has done when confronted with her own past ignorance.
She said she has also urged him to better understand Jewish religious beliefs, pointing to his post-primary reference to "breaking bread with Jews at Passover," when bread is intentionally not eaten during the holiday. "But I asked, could you learn a little bit more about our religion so that you understand it?" Nessel said. "Could you learn a little bit more than maybe what your bubble is telling you about the history of Israel and its relationship to the Jewish people?" "Because now, when I speak to him, there seems to be a real dearth of like, again, historical knowledge, political knowledge, and religious knowledge about all of those things.
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