JD Vance Called Abdul El-Sayed ‘Evil.’ He’s One to Talk.
The Bulwark · C · trust 43/100
Where does the vice president go to give his apology?
Mona Charen September 3 Upgrade to listen 11 minutes 12 2 5 (Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/ The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock) IN A YEAR WHEN DEMOCRATS have the wind at their backs and a shot at winning even in Texas, primary voters in Michigan have chosen a Senate candidate in Abdul El-Sayed who needlessly alienates many voters. But of all the Republican politicians to criticize El-Sayed, JD Vance may be the least well suited, because when it comes to tolerance for extremism and antisemitism, Vance and El-Sayed are almost equally matched players in a dangerous, illiberal game. It’s a mark of how far our guardrails have fallen that leading American political figures are engaging in more or less open race/religion baiting—and each is in high dudgeon that the other is doing it.
El-Sayed has waded into extremist waters a number of times, most prominently when he seemed to downplay the horror of an attempted attack on a Michigan synagogue. On March 12, Ayman Ghazali drove a truck, filled with fireworks and gasoline, into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield. The truck caught fire after it crashed through the doors. At the time, more than a hundred students and some fifty staff were inside the religious school. One security guard was struck and injured and more than sixty police and firemen were treated for smoke inhalation. Ghazali committed suicide by shooting himself.
El-Sayed condemned the attack, but a few days later, noting that relatives of the attacker had died in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon, El-Sayed equivocated, saying “Hurt people hurt people.” If you think that Israel’s actions in Lebanon justify or excuse in any way an attack on Jewish children in Michigan, you are missing something fundamental about liberal values. Would El-Sayed say the same if a Jewish American whose relatives had been killed by Hamas on October 7th attempted to bomb a Muslim school?
In contrast to the MAGA style of politics, El-Sayed has apologized. Speaking to Michigan’s Jewish Democratic Caucus on Sunday, he said , “My comments may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify. To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.” Is he apologizing for the fact that others “misconstrued” his remarks? That is pretty weak tea as apologies go, but it’s better than Vance’s record, which we’ll come to soon.
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El-Sayed has a history of associating himself and his campaign with people who clearly cross the line, and has not apologized for doing so. What prompted him to invite Hasan Piker to campaign with him? Piker is an encyclopedia of offenses and idiocies. He thinks Communist China and Cuba are great role models, excused Hamas for raping Israeli women, and invited a Vietnamese refugee who recounted her suffering to “Suck my dick old lady.” He calls critics “rabid, ultra-Zionist pigs,” and lately has lapsed into the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger mode of warning American Jews that if they “keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action—not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.” That last one, in addition to holding Jews responsible for how others perceive them, is an invitation to antisemitic violence notionally veiled in concern. How would Piker react if someone were to warn that if Muslim Americans didn’t stop supporting the Palestinians, “someone is going to come around and take action”?
El-Sayed isn’t responsible for everything his supporters say, but Piker is a hateful extremist whose support El-Sayed sought—and he isn’t the only one. El-Sayed also campaigned with Amir Makled , a progressive who has a history of pro-Hezbollah posts, and who has recirculated antisemitic memes—ironically, from rightwing figures Marjorie Taylor Greene and Candace Owens. Makled reposted a message from Owens calling Israelis “demons” who “lie, cheat, murder, and blackmail.” There’s nothing to unite extremists of the left and right quite like some undiluted antisemitism.
People often ask whether all criticism of Israel can be tarred as antisemitism. The answer is: of course not. Israel merits condemnation for its unjust actions, as any nation does, and anyone who attempts to paint all criticism as antisemitism is doing no favors to Jews or to the truth. But when someone seems obsessed about Israel’s sins but unbothered by those of China, Sudan, Hamas, Russia, or countless others, or when someone invites or excuses violence against American Jews, that clearly crosses the line.
WOULD THAT THERE WERE a responsible opposition to the Michigan Democrats who could, with integrity, rebuke El-Sayed. Alas, we have JD Vance. “I realize that there’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil and on the rise in the United States of America today,” Vance said last week . He’s one to talk.
The company Vance keeps includes Tucker Carlson, whose obsession with Israel and Jews has become pathological. Even after Carlson’s softball interviews with white nationalist antisemite Nick Fuentes (who also feuds with Vance, but that’s a topic for another day) and Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper, whom Carlson praised as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” Vance refused to distance himself from Carlson. Given the opportunity to do so at a White House press briefing Thursday, he demurred : “I’m not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them. I think that is a terrible place for the U.S. to go.”
Vance sees pas d’ennemis à droite . So in October, when a bunch of Republican operatives were discovered to have exchanged texts calling black people…
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