Tensions over Israel burst into the open in the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan this week after a candidate scheduled rallies with a provocative left-wing streamer who has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and its war in Gaza.
The candidate, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who is in a competitive three-way Democratic primary, faced forceful criticism from his opponents and others within his party after announcing that the streamer, Hasan Piker, would join him at rallies at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University on April 7.
Mr. Piker’s huge, young following has made him an appealing ally for progressive Democrats. He taped an interview with Zohran Mamdani last year during the New York mayoral race and later attended Mr. Mamdani’s election night party. In 2024, he filmed a stream from the Democratic National Convention. Some have called Mr. Piker the Joe Rogan of the left.
But his statements about Israel have alarmed some Democrats. He has said that the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was the “direct consequence” of actions by the Israeli and U.S. governments and that it “doesn’t matter” if rapes happened on Oct. 7, saying “that doesn’t change the dynamic for me.” Seeming to refer to Hamas-led violence, he also said: “The Palestinian resistance is not perfect.”
Mr. Piker stood by those comments in an interview Friday. He said he did not deny there was sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attack, but that “doesn’t make genocide acceptable.” He also once said the United States “deserved” the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but later apologized for the comment.
Dr. El-Sayed’s rivals seized on Mr. Piker’s planned visit, which was announced 12 days after a man drove a truck into a synagogue in suburban Detroit, wounding a guard, in what the authorities described as a targeted act against the Jewish community.
In an interview with Jewish Insider on Thursday, State Senator Mallory McMorrow, another candidate, described Mr. Piker as “somebody who says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks.”
“That is not somebody that you should be campaigning with at a moment when there is clearly a lot of pain and trauma across our state,” Ms. McMorrow told the news outlet, adding, “You don’t fan the flames and stoke division just to get attention.”
Representative Haley Stevens, a moderate fourth-term congresswoman and another candidate in the primary, said in a statement Friday that it was “unacceptable” for Dr. El-Sayed to campaign with Mr. Piker. She accused Mr. Piker of building a career on “hurtful and antisemitic comments.”
In the interview, Mr. Piker strongly denied accusations of antisemitism, saying that his criticisms of Israel are confined to the country’s government and not directed at Jews broadly.
“States and people are wholly removed from each other,” Mr. Piker said, adding, “I find it very cynical when people say that I’m antisemitic or make any conflation between Judaism and Zionism.”
Dr. El-Sayed, Ms. McMorrow and Ms. Stevens appear to be in a tight, three-way contest according to numerous public polls.
Democrats are hoping to hold the Senate seat in Michigan as they chart a narrow path to win the chamber in the November general election. The closely watched Democratic primary has been seen as a test of the direction of the party going into 2028. The seat is now held by Senator Gary Peters, a Democrat who is not running for re-election.
In the 2024 presidential primary, about one in eight voters in Michigan voted “uncommitted” as part of a protest of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s approach to the war in Gaza. (Mr. Biden was running for re-election at the time.) In largely Arab American precincts in the state, about 75 percent of Democrats voted “uncommitted.”
Dr. El-Sayed, whose campaign called for a lowering of temperatures after the synagogue attack, showed no sign of backing down over Mr. Piker. He suggested Friday that Mr. Piker provided a valuable voice at a time when the party is grasping to reach younger voters.
“We always ask why young people don’t vote,” Dr. El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official, said in a statement. “Maybe it’s because politicians don’t talk to folks in the places they actually are, or worse, purposely exclude them. I’m not a politician and won’t stop talking to everyone else who they’ve locked out.”
The Detroit suburbs have long been a theater for debates over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The area is home to one of the largest Arab American populations in the United States and a large, deeply rooted Jewish community.
The local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League called Mr. Piker’s invitation to the campaign trail “deeply troubling.” Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the organization, said in a statement that the invitation was “absolutely shocking” and reflected a “dangerous normalization of antisemitism in our politics.”
Even beyond Michigan, Representative Brad Schneider, a Democrat from a deep-blue Illinois district, said on social media that “Democrats risk losing our credibility to condemn those on the right who traffic in bigotry.” He wrote that Mr. Piker was an “unapologetic antisemite.”
Mr. Piker said that it was “very flattering” that he was receiving so much attention, but that he was puzzled by recent pushback after years of engagement with Democratic politicians. Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who ran for mayor of New York last year, tried to use Mr. Mamdani’s ties to Mr. Piker as an attack line during that campaign. Mr. Mamdani won anyway.
“Why is it only now that people are getting very frustrated by it?” Mr. Piker asked. “I assume it’s because there is a power center in the party that is worried about losing its grip, losing its relevancy.”
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