With the 2026 midterm elections ushering in Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed as the first Muslim senator elected to Congress, another anti-Israel radical has broken ground in gaining high office in America. El-Sayed’s rhetoric in the course of the campaign as well as his long record of association with extreme anti-Israel organizations, such as Muslim Brotherhood front groups, echo the career path of New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani. For both, blatantly biased characterizations of Israel are at the forefront of their rhetoric and agenda.
Indeed, both men have powered their way forward politically with a focus on scapegoating Israel and, by extension, Jewish Americans who support Israel, for the supposed diversion of American resources from local needs to foreign uses. Like Mamdani, El-Sayed has claimed repeatedly and falsely in interviews and on the campaign trail that but for the spending to provide bombs for Israel to drop in an allegedly genocidal war against Gaza, citizens of Michigan would be able to afford essentials they now lack.
This venomous, false message goes unchallenged. Typical was a session in September 2026, at a Saginaw, Michigan campaign stop where El-Sayed told a receptive audience that interrupted him repeatedly with applause:
We need to fully fund school infrastructure. A lot of people are like, “How are you going to pay for that?” I don’t know — don’t send bombs to other places to drop on schools. But here we just did $2.8 billion in bombs — 2,000-pound bombs. 2,000 bombs never fed anybody. It never built anything. It never taught anybody. $2.8 billion to Israel for 2,000-pound bombs. How are we going to pay for it? Not $2.8 billion in bombs — $2.8 billion in schools.
In August, he casually slandered Israel to NPR listeners, with no pushback from the interviewer, saying:
I mean, if you think about it, we send – what? – $3.3 billion at baseline, 22 billion over the last several years to a country that has done a genocide and apartheid. And instead of that, I think it’s probably better to use our money to provide good schools and healthcare for kids here. So regardless of what you think about there, I think our people have a right to our tax dollars, and we ought to spend that money here, to invest here.
The lies injected relentlessly claiming American tax dollars diverted to a foreign, (Jewish) state to enact “genocide” and “apartheid” cause diminished funding for basic needs of working people in the United States undoubtedly incite audience anger and resentment. Moreover, although advocates for a close US-Israel relationship have long made the case that defense aid to Israel is highly beneficial for both the nations, the apparent hatred of the Jewish state by El Sayed and Mamdani is beyond the rational.
For those open to facts, the logic in providing Israel, a fellow democracy, weaponry for its self-defense against many of the same enemies that have threatened and killed hundreds of Americans is obvious and powerful. Among those who have written extensively on this issue with reference to the technological, military, financial and geopolitical benefits of the Israel-America relationship, is Yoram Ettinger, former Israeli diplomat in America. He notes, for instance, the statement of former US Air Force Intelligence Chief, General George Keegan in an interview with the New York Times, that “the scope of intelligence provided by Israel would require the US to maintain ‘5 CIA’s.’”
El-Sayed’s audiences got none of that context, cheered his promises of Medicare for all and more money in their pockets and then at his election victory celebration, supporters chanted “Free Palestine”!
The new senator had throughout the campaign welcomed support from extremist anti-Israel voices, including podcasters Cenk Yygur and Hasan Piker, both of whose virulent messaging about Israel and Jews was outside the acceptable even for El Sayed, but the candidate wanted access to their large audiences and weathered the controversies. (Piker said El Sayed had strongly urged him to campaign with him.)
A six-part series by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) probes a larger question related El-Sayed’s background and connections – his organizational and familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Are his goals in winning large audiences to his hostile, biased views about Israel and other issues reflective of the aims of the Muslim Brotherhood? He was repeatedly questioned during his campaign about his MB connections, and offered only irritated denials or deflections to retorts of Islamaphobia.
Entitled “El-Sayed In the Brotherhood’s Orbit” the IPT series outlines the many connections of the incumbent senator to MB-linked groups in America throughout his life, including the Muslim Students Association during his years at the University of Michigan. He held a leadership role in that influential group which the FBI has termed “The first formal US MB organization.”
A detailed explanation of the Brotherhood’s grand plan for America would likely surprise some who cast a vote for El-Sayed. A key document of the movement reads:
Understanding the Role of the Muslim Brother in North America
The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.
In the months ahead, increased transparency and public awareness may reveal the full background to El Sayed’s distorted preoccupation with Israel and his injecting false claims about the Jewish state into domestic American policy issues.
