Michael Oren is former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and founder of the Israel Advocacy Group.
Contrary to the iconic Saul Steinberg map, published on The New Yorker’s cover in 1976, America does not end at the Hudson River.
“In fact," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once told me, “America begins 70 miles west of New York and ends 70 miles east of Los Angeles."
And in the middle of that vast expanse sits the verdant, generally prosperous, and usually stable state of Michigan.
“That’s why I wish again that I was in Michigan," wrote the great American Jewish composer Irving Berlin back in 1914. One wonders if today, 112 years later, Berlin would express the same yearning. For it is in Michigan - improbably but plausibly - that the future of American Jewry will be decided.
It’s in Michigan that an amply documented antisemite was just elected to the U.S. Senate.
On paper, Abdul El-Sayed is the fulfillment of the American dream. Educated at Michigan University, Columbia University, and the University of Oxford, a former Rhodes Scholar with both an MD and a Ph.D., director of major Michigan health departments, charismatic and articulate. At 42, he seems bound for national prominence.
But El-Sayed, a protégée of Bernie Sanders and other Far-Left politicians, has espoused many of the positions familiar to followers of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and members of the Democratic Socialists of America. And born to Egyptian immigrant parents, El-Sayed was raised on a hatred of Israel so visceral it easily melds into antisemitism.
He is far from the first Democratic Party politician to call for the cessation of U.S. military aid to Israel, or to accuse the Jewish state of apartheid and genocide. “We want our taxes spent here, for schools here, and healthcare here, and infrastructure here. We don’t want our money sent to do apartheid, or genocide, or war," he said during his victory speech last night to cheering supporters.
But El-Sayed is the first candidate for national office to justify an attempted mass murder of Jews.
On March 12th of this year, Lebanese-American Ayman Mohamad Ghazali drove a fuel- and fireworks-laden pickup truck into Temple Israel outside of Detroit. At the time, the synagogue was crowded with children and teachers. Fortunately, the truck became wedged in a hallway and Ghazali shot himself before the cargo could explode.
Yet rather than express relief for the many innocent lives saved or unequivocally condemn a flagrantly racist act of terrorism, El-Sayed noted that Ghazali had lost close family members in Israel’s battle with Hezbollah in Lebanon. “Hurt people hurt people," the aspiring senator explained.
In June, federal prosecutors indicted 24-year-old Mariam Odeh and others for a campaign of intimidation, threats, and vandalism targeting University of Michigan officials and members of the Jewish community to press the university to divest from Israel. Odeh also worked for El-Sayed’s senatorial campaign.
More recently, an advertisement released by a pro-El-Sayed political organization shows a working-class couple unable to buy eggs and bananas for their children. The mother says, “We have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians." The commercial not only accuses Israel of genocide, but of taking billions out of Americans’ pockets to pay for its universal healthcare. El-Sayed repeatedly refused to condemn it.
“The ad did not invent its argument," said El-Sayed’s former Democratic Party challenger, Representative Haley Stevens. “It dramatized one Dr. El-Sayed has made in his own words throughout this campaign: that Israel is the reason Michigan cannot afford schools, healthcare, and childcare."
He has since tried to walk back his comments about the Temple Israel attack and tried to disassociate himself from the antisemitic ad. He insists that he’s not Michigan’s Mamdani or a secret member of Democratic Socialists of America. He similarly distances himself from his family’s longstanding connections to the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood (more on this below), denounces antisemitism, and proclaims his commitment to protecting the state’s 129,000 Jews.
But no one doubts (nor does he deny) that his hatred of the homeland of half of the world’s Jews and sympathy for those sworn to destroy it remain undiminished.
“They try to call you hateful if you believe that Palestinian kids should get to grow up in the land of their forefathers without being murdered by our tax dollars," he said during his victory speech.
Now that he has been elected, El-Sayed will not only vote against systems development and intelligence sharing with Israel, but also for sanctions against the Jewish state. He will favor boycotts and sanctions. No one doubts that El-Sayed’s election will not sound a dog whistle, but a clarion call, to Jew-haters nationwide.
Which brings me back to Michigan - not the land of the farms and streams longed for in the Berlin ballad, but the state that epitomizes midwestern America, a down-to-earth land of basically clear-sighted and tolerant people who have been traditionally welcoming to Jews.
Michigan is not New York, a politically raucous city filled with the disgruntled and indebted humanities majors who are just maddened enough to elect a Mamdani and other fanatics from the Democratic Socialists of America. Michigan is a bellwether, a standard-bearer, for much of America.
For American Jews, El-Sayed’s victory may well be a turning point from which there is no return. Jew-hatred has officially come to the Senate.
Reposted with permission from Future of Jewish, which calls itself "the ultimate newsletter by and for people passionate about Judaism and Israel."