The Dangers of Anti-American Leftists Like Abdul El-Sayed Cannot Be Overstated

The rise of radical-Left socialist figures who are flagrantly anti-American and pro-jihadist should concern every American who loves their country. That's not hyperbole: The news out of Michigan last week is a case in point. Abdul El-Sayed has built a public record – in his statements, his affiliations, and the company he keeps – that reveals a worldview that is deeply troubling.

First and perhaps most dangerous, he is an unrepentant apologist for terrorism – not just abroad, but in his own backyard. Earlier this year, a man affiliated with Hezbollah drove a truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, where hundreds of children were attending preschool. (By the grace of God, no one was killed.) According to the temple’s rabbi, El-Sayed minimized the attack by saying, “Hurt people hurt people.” He also noted that the terrorist’s family members had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. Translation: The attacker’s anger at Israel somehow forced him to commit this heinous act; so, in essence, culpability actually lies with Israel, not the aspiring mass murderer.

That position isn’t just intellectually specious; it’s evil. And it’s consistent with a worldview that consistently valorizes Islamists and reeks of antisemitism. El-Sayed has called Israel “bloodthirsty,” and has trafficked in the modern-day blood libel that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. He has called the Israeli government “evil,” drawing an equivalency between the democratically elected government of the world’s only Jewish state and Hamas. On the campaign trail, he has constantly invoked the bogeyman of AIPAC as a stand-in for “Jew,” with all the subtlety of a Der Stürmer cartoon. And he refuses to say whether Israel has a right to exist, telling CNN, “I’m not going to play this gotcha game about whether or not it has a right to exist.”

They say that a man is known by the company he keeps, and Abdul El-Sayed’s backers do nothing to dispel the concerns raised by his public positions. Amir Makled, a candidate for the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents, who campaigned for El-Sayed in April 2026, publicly called Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a “martyr” and called on the Iranian regime to “show no laxity” to Israel.

El-Sayed shared the stage of an Islamic Relief USA fundraiser with Amer Zahr, who in 2017 told a Dearborn rally, “[W]hether it’s called Hamas, whether it’s called Hezbollah, we stand with everybody who stands against the Israeli occupation.” In 2024, the House Ways & Means Committee opened an investigation into IRUSA and its parent organization, Islamic Relief Worldwide, over allegations that roughly a third of IRUSA’s revenue flows to Islamic Relief Worldwide, which Israel sanctioned in 2014 over alleged Hamas support. IRUSA’s CEO, Ahmed Shehata, donated to El-Sayed’s 2026 Senate campaign.

El-Sayed accepted the endorsement of AAPAC, a Dearborn-based group led by Osama Siblani, who has reportedly called for Israelis to be sent “back to Poland” and is a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah. He has campaigned alongside the noxious streamer Hasan Piker, who has said Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel and that America “deserved 9/11.”

And closer to home, El-Sayed’s father-in-law Dr. Tayeb Jukaku is one of the largest financial backers of the pro-El-Sayed super PAC, and has been part of the governing bodies of two organizations named as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2007 terrorism financing case, USA v. Holy Land Foundation.

As a four-term Congressman and President Trump’s former CIA Director and Secretary of State, I’ve had my share of tough fights with my opponents on the Left. But I also knew that, while we might have disagreed vigorously over how to achieve the right outcome for the American people, the vast majority of my colleagues loved America, believed in the promise of our system, and wanted the best for our country.

Sadly, that is very clearly not the case with El-Sayed. This is someone whose core beliefs are fundamentally arrayed against the constitutional principles and moral values that Americans across the political spectrum hold dear. I pray the American people reject these anti-American views – whether in our schools, our churches, or at the ballot box.