Abdul El-Sayed refuses to distance himself from anti-Israel extremist Hasan Piker even as Jewish Michiganders are scared

Far-left Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed gave a mealy-mouthed answer about his ties to extremist socialist streamer Hasan Piker in a softball interview with the New York Times – even as Jewish constituents voice deep concerns about his march to the Senate.El-Sayed, 41, eked out a narrow victory over Rep.Haley Stevens in Tuesday night’s Senate primary, besting her by fewer than 15,000 votes out of more than 1.5 million cast.The slim win came after polls had shown El-Sayed leading by double digits just a week before the contest.Piker, a leftist provocateur who was one of his biggest boosters on the campaign trail, has a history of making repugnant, anti-American and anti-Israel comments, such as saying the US “deserved 9/11,” and claiming it “doesn’t matter” if rapes occurred during Hamas’ Oct.

7, 2023 terror attack against Israel.The Times asked him whether he plans to retain Piker as a surrogate headed into the general election in November, but he refused to drop him.Instead, El-Sayed demurred, saying only, “Look, I’m just a lot more focused on who I’m campaigning to.”The Michigan Dem has his own checkered past of eyebrow-raising comments, including a video message he issued a day after a March 12 terror attack in which a man drove his pickup truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, which was full of schoolchildren at the time.In the video, El-Sayed noted the attacker had lost family members in an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon, and said “violence always begets violence,” which some Jewish critics took as a dogwhistle justification for the attack.Such comments, as well as his association with Piker, are stoking fear among Michigan Jews, who question whether his rhetoric will put them in danger if he’s elected.“It is just a scary time right now,” Joe Tigay, 44, a father of three young children, told the Detroit Free Press.

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