Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed apologized to Jewish Democrats Saturday for comments he made in March about an attack on a synagogue near Detroit that linked the incident to a broader cycle of violence.
“To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention,” El-Sayed told reporters after addressing the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus at the state party’s convention in Lansing.
“My comments might have been misconstrued to be justifying something I did not intend to justify,” he said.
El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate, is battling Republican Mike Rogers for an open Michigan Senate seat in the November midterm elections. The contest is one of a handful of races that are pivotal to determining whether Democrats can wrest the Senate from Republican control.
After a man rammed his truck into Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan in March, El-Sayed condemned the attack in a video statement and added that his experience as an epidemiologist had taught him that “hurt people hurt people” and that “violence is a cycle.”
Authorities said that the assailant, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Lebanon, had lost several family members in an Israeli airstrike the week before and that the attack was a targeted act against the Jewish community.
The attack started a fire at the synagogue and left a security guard injured. Ghazali killed himself at the scene.
El-Sayed said Saturday that his comments at the time were an attempt to contextualize the attacker’s actions but said they were not the right response to what had happened.
“What I was trying to do is offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context. And you don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain,” he said.
El-Sayed is seeking to win over swing voters and unite Democrats after narrowly prevailing in a hard-fought primary contest earlier this month over Haley Stevens.
El-Sayed drew strong support from progressive Democrats while Stevens was favored by prominent establishment figures in the party, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York). El-Sayed’s criticisms of Israel were a flash point in the primary.
His apology over his remarks about the synagogue attack comes as he also has been under fire for his ties to controversial streamer Hasan Piker.
El-Sayed’s campaign was consumed for days with the fallout from Piker’s Aug. 20 live stream on the platform Twitch, where he warned that Israel has become so politically toxic that supporting the country could incite violence against Jewish Americans.
In a statement Monday, El-Sayed said he wanted it to be “crystal clear” that “nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople.”
El-Sayed has also found himself on the defensive over a comment that Piker made on one of his broadcasts in 2019, and subsequently apologized for, that “America deserved 9/11.”
Pressed on Saturday about Piker, El-Sayed said the streamer was not relevant to the issues that are front and center for voters.
“If you want to make this race about a streamer in California, I just think you’re missing the boat. This is about affordability in Michigan,” he said. “This is about Donald Trump’s disastrous policies in Michigan. That’s what I’m focused on right now.“
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