Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan primary win is a watershed moment for anti-Israel Democrats

Progressive in key swing state takes a step closer to the US Senate, after tens of millions of dollars spent by AIPAC, marking a huge victory for opponents of Israel in the party

When progressive Abdul El-Sayed declared victory on Wednesday against his moderate opponent, US Representative Haley Stevens, he was celebrating a win in a hard-fought Democratic Senate primary battle in Michigan.

But he was also cheering on behalf of a much larger cause: The ascendant anti-Israel movement in the Democratic Party.

El-Sayed isn’t the first pro-Palestinian activist to win a major race. But more than any single candidate, his success demonstrates that the party is taking a sharp turn on Israel, and that it’s doing so quickly.

El-Sayed is hardly the first anti-Israel candidate to hoist the Democratic Party’s banner. Zohran Mamdani, who has called pro-Palestinian activism the “core” of his politics, is the mayor of America’s biggest city. A string of anti-Israel candidates have won Democratic primaries in recent months. Several more already serve in Congress.

But in numerous ways, this is a bigger deal than all of those — even if El-Sayed doesn’t win the general election in November. In many senses, in fact, it’s anti-Israel activists’ biggest victory so far — and the biggest defeat for pro-Israel activists, including the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

Putting a staunch opponent of Israel at the door of the Senate

For one thing, this is a race for the Senate — not for a House district, and not for a city hall. Every US House member is just one of 435, serving a two-year term. They tend to run the ideological gamut and include not a few people with fringe beliefs.

And Mamdani, for all his power and influence, has no direct role in American foreign policy. He and his critics talk about Israel often, but it’s always refracted through the lens of issues within New York’s city limits, like whether he’s going to march in the pro-Israel parade, or whether he can arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or whether his public condemnations of Israel have anything to do with the rise in antisemitic incidents on his watch.

Senators are more prestigious and influential than representatives, serving in a body of just 100 and elected to six-year terms that span presidential elections. The Senate votes on treaties, and it approves or strikes down defense budgets. Senators also have a history of direct involvement in American foreign policy. Look no further than the late Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who was known for globetrotting, and for his outspoken support for Ukraine and Israel.

Speaking against Israel’s Jewish character

Now, Michigan Democrats have nominated someone for that role who is a vocal critic not just of Israeli policy, not just of the leading US pro-Israel lobby, but of Israel’s character as a Jewish state.

He was asked last month by CNN whether it’s possible to be both Zionist and progressive. His answer? “Every definition of a Jewish state ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every single one.” He also said that money is the only reason Democrats who “believe in human rights” would support Israel. (Elsewhere, he has spoken in favor of Jewish “self-determination.”)

He has consistently decried US aid to Israel. And he has campaigned with Hasan Piker, the outspoken anti-Israel streamer who recently blamed Israel, without evidence, for instigating the recent crisis in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, and who has praised Hezbollah while calling Hamas 1,000 times better than Israel.

El-Sayed has framed much of his campaign around domestic concerns. But if he is elected, his foreign policy views will get a prominent platform.

Right now, the senator considered by many to be the chamber’s loudest critic of Israel is Vermont’s Bernie Sanders. But Sanders is a Jew who has defended Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, and who once lived on an Israeli kibbutz. Sanders endorsed El-Sayed, and if El-Sayed wins, he will become the Senate’s biggest opponent of Israel.

A boost from swing state Democrats

The second reason why his primary win is significant is that it occurred in a large swing state that has been under the American political spotlight for more than a decade. Other staunch opponents of Israel who have won House primaries recently — Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, for example, or Melat Kiros in Colorado — have done so in solidly blue districts that have long been seen as progressive strongholds.

Michigan is deeply purple. It has voted for the winner of the presidential election five times straight, and its races have been tightly fought for the past few cycles. The Senate election in November, pitting El-Sayed against Republican Representative Mike Rogers, is considered a nail-biter. El-Sayed’s win showed that his brand of anti-Israel politics plays among Democrats not just in liberal bastions like New York City and Denver, but in a politically diverse battleground state.

A stark defeat for AIPAC

El-Sayed’s victory is also a painful defeat for AIPAC, which once commanded broad loyalty among Democrats but now has lost a race where it spent record amounts to defeat an anti-Israel candidate.

The lobby spent an unprecedented $30 million or so on behalf of Stevens, part of more than $60 million in spending by outside groups that gave Stevens a nine-to-one financial advantage over El-Sayed. Graham Platner, the former disgraced Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, was also a vocal critic of Israel and accused it of genocide, but did not attract nearly the same amount of spending from AIPAC.

It didn’t help — and El-Sayed made it the centerpiece of his campaign, posting online about AIPAC frequently, decrying its influence and once calling Stevens “a suit with a large AIPAC bank account” who couldn’t “string together two coherent sentences.”

Some voices said El-Sayed’s focus on AIPAC smacked of antisemitism. In the closing days of the campaign, Stevens, who is not Jewish, posted online to her opponent, “everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.”

She meant it as an attack. But ironically, all of the AIPAC spending may have turned some voters toward El-Sayed. National polls show most Democrats have an unfavorable view of Israel. And a poll last month found that about half of Michigan Democrats have an unfavorable view of AIPAC, as opposed to just 12% who view it favorably.

Will Jews vote for El-Sayed?

El-Sayed has also been accused of antisemitism for his response to the March attack by a Lebanese American man on a Detroit-area synagogue, which he condemned before adding that “hurt people do hurt people, and the circumstances happening 6,000 miles away can affect the lives that we live here.” The remark was a reference to Israel’s war in Lebanon, and drew concerns that he was excusing or equivocating about the attack.

He has pushed back repeatedly on accusations of antisemitism. Speaking on Wednesday, he spoke about experiences he had going to synagogue or attending a Passover Seder (where, in an awkward turn of phrase, he recalled being able to “break bread”).

“To all of my sisters and brothers of the Jewish faith, or any faith, or no faith at all, my commitment to Jewish safety is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters,” he said.

A chunk of Michigan Jews will likely be persuaded by that commitment. Jews have historically voted for Democrats in large numbers, political polarization remains at a fever pitch in the US, and Jewish Democrats in a swing state may not be willing to abandon their party’s nominee in a crucial election where control of the Senate is at stake, regardless of how they feel about the nominee’s Israel policy.

In any case, however, the AIPAC discourse almost certainly isn’t over. On Wednesday, as it licked its wounds from the primary defeat, the lobby said its “members remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr. El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda in November.”