Michigan's newly elected Senator Abdul El-Sayed says Democrats who stand with Israel have already walked out of the party, and he intends to treat them that way.
El-Sayed pointed to Rep. Haley Stevens, the Michigan Democrat he unseated in the primary, saying she "self-expelled" by endorsing his Republican opponent in the general election. "When you self-expel, at some point, you're choosing to walk all the way out of the tent. And that was a choice she made," he said in an interview on PBS NewsHour. Stevens has not left the Democratic Party and remains a sitting House Democrat.
His comments widen a deeper split over foreign policy. El-Sayed argues Americans have reached a "consensus" against spending tax dollars "to buy bombs and tanks for other countries," and he wants US military assistance conditioned on international law. He accused Israel of "genocide or apartheid" and of fighting "a war we have no business fighting for the annexation of a different country," grouping it with Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as recipients he would not defend.
Asked on 60 Minutes whether Israel has a right to exist, he answered "Yes, if there is a shared understanding," after giving an unqualified yes to the same question about Palestine. At an event billed as "Jews for Abdul," he said he "struggles" with Israel existing as a Jewish state and called it an apartheid regime.
He has also declined to condemn Iran's Revolutionary Guard or the Islamic Republic when confronted by an Iranian-American student at the University of Michigan, shifting instead to criticism of American "regime change" and Washington acting as the "world's policemen." He blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for pushing the United States toward war with Iran and dismissed questions about which country poses the greater threat as "dumb."
His victory makes him Michigan's first Muslim senator, and his opening moves signal that the fight over Israel policy will now be waged inside the Democratic Party as much as against Republicans.