How Middle East conflict is infiltrating the tight US Senate race in Michigan | Michigan

A A heated debate over criticism of Israel and the role of political influencer Hasan Piker on the left has bitterly divided progressives and establishment Democrats in a U.S. Senate race in Michigan, an electorally swing state. The ongoing controversy likely marks a preview of things to come as the midterm and 2028 elections gather pace, and it draws warnings from Arab American leaders in a state where the party’s Israel policy has seriously hurt Kamala Harris’ campaign.

Mallory McMorrow, a state senator favored by much of the establishment, is in a tight three-way race with progressive Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens, the AIPAC-backed U.S. Rep. El-Sayed and Piker announced plans to reunite last week. In response, McMorrow, the Anti-Defamation League, the Trump administration, Third Way, Senator Elissa Slotkin and other pro-Israel figures went on the offensive, calling Piker an anti-Semite and seeking to criticize El-Sayed for her association with him.

Piker, who is Muslim and has an audience of 3 million on the streaming platform Twitch, is often highly critical of Israel for its attack on Gaza, the invasion of Lebanon, the war with Iran, the treatment of the Palestinian people and other issues, sometimes in provocative terms – he has described Hamas as “a thousand times better than the fascist apartheid colonial state.” He is also a strong political force with a large following among young voters: Piker interviewed and received praise from Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, and was invited by the Harris campaign to livestream the Democratic National Convention in August 2024.

Seven Arab American leaders who spoke to the Guardian say the centrist Democrats’ attack on El-Sayed and Piker is a strategic and moral mistake that shows the party is making the same mistakes that fueled its 2024 election defeat in the swing state and nationally.

They called the attacks an attempt to censor criticism of Israel and an expression of an anti-Arab bias that permeates much of the political establishment. Michigan is home to the largest per capita Arab American population in the United States, and it is anchored by a huge Lebanese diaspora largely from southern Lebanon. The controversy unfolds amid Israel’s assault on southern Lebanon and as Israel and its military action are deeply unpopular among Democrats.

“They are not showing empathy toward the Lebanese and Muslim communities,” said Basim Elkarra, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action.

Harris lost Michigan in 2024 by just 80,000 votes, and by one estimate, support for Israel cost him 100,000 votes here. A November 2024 Guardian analysis found a 22,000-vote gap to Democrats in the three cities with the largest Arab American and Muslim populations. Nationally, one poll found that this was the top issue for Democrats who did not support Harris.

“Some members of the Democratic Party have not learned the lessons of 2024,” Elkarra added. “Especially in a battleground state, I think they will suffer the consequences in 2028 if they don’t rectify their strategy.”

This moment in Michigan is particularly sensitive. McMorrow and his surrogates said Piker should be avoided because the rallies come less than a month after the attack on the Temple Israel synagogue, which was widely condemned by Michigan’s Arab-American community. McMorrow did not respond to requests for comment.

“He’s not someone you should be campaigning with at a time when there’s clearly a lot of pain and trauma in our state,” McMorrow told Jewish Insider while noting that children were in the synagogue. “You don’t fan the flames.”

But leaders of the Arab-American and Muslim communities who spoke to the Guardian stressed that the suffering on both sides can be recognized as the conflict in the Middle East intensifies. They view the exclusion of their suffering as a deliberate political maneuver.

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon has displaced more than a million civilians in recent months, and the IDF has begun wiping out Lebanese villages from which some Michiganders or their families come, “following the Gaza model,” in the words of Israel’s defense minister. Virtually every one of Michigan’s 120,000 Lebanese-Americans has family members or friends who were displaced or killed by Israel, said Arab Americans who spoke to the Guardian.

“There is an asymmetry of compassion and an asymmetry of political pressure – the Arabs get the pressure and Israel gets the compassion,” said James Zogby, a Lebanese-American member of the Democratic National Committee. “No one will pay attention to the human aspect of the situation, that their ancestral village has disappeared and their houses have been demolished. »

In an interview with the Guardian, El-Sayed expressed a similar sentiment: “The Arab community, its voice and its pain have become insignificant or, even worse, an embarrassing aspect of our political situation. »

A national poll shows that Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians than with the Israelis, that support for Israel’s war in Gaza has fallen to 8 percent among the party’s voters, and that the vast majority of Democrats support an arms embargo. Piker frequently expresses sympathy for the Palestinian people, criticizes Israeli wars and calls for an arms embargo.

Piker called the attack on Temple Israel a “heinous act of violence.” But he also believes it’s “Islamophobic to say, ‘Oh, this Muslim critic of Israel who has the majority opinion on Israel shouldn’t go to a campaign rally.’

“Michigan is a state [Democrats] lost for this specific reason.

Asked about a comment in which he called some Orthodox Jews in Israel “inbred,” Piker told the Guardian that he uses the term “as a derogatory term against ethnoreligious and racial supremacists of all kinds – it has nothing to do with Judaism.” He has widely said he stands by his comments, but also recently expressed regret over the “inbred” comment and said he could have been more careful.

Piker said he regularly educates his listeners about the dangers of anti-Semitism and “how it is the canary in the coal mine of fascism.”

“I will continue to do this because anti-Semitism is morally repugnant, but the difference is that I believe anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are morally repugnant…and I am anti-genocide, anti-fascist and therefore anti-Zionist,” Piker said.

TAlthough many of El-Sayed’s and Piker’s political positions are aligned, El-Sayed told the Guardian that he didn’t agree with everything Piker said, and he also offered an explanation about To illustrate this point, El-Sayed appeared on Fox News last week.

The interests of all Michiganders and Arab Americans are “the same,” El-Sayed said.

“Every dollar we spend on a pointless, illegal and unjustified war in Iran, which allows Israel to annex southern Lebanon and destroy people and their lives, is a dollar that is not spent improving our schools, providing health care to the population and repairing our broken infrastructure. »