After Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), Jews should “take very seriously any threats or condemnations of the Jewish people or Israel,” according to Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America.
“The safety and security of Jews and the Jewish state should now become the priority when we decide whom to vote for,” he told JNS.
Klein didn’t endorse any candidate but said that “the priority of whom we vote for in this era should be who will protect Jews and the Jewish state best.”
“All other issues become secondary during this era of rising Jew-hatred,” he told JNS.
El-Sayed has described the Israeli government as “bloodthirsty” and “as evil as Hamas,” called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal, opposed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred and defended campaigning with antisemitic commentator Hasan Piker.
Klein urged greater Jewish engagement and advocacy. “Jews now should become more active to protect Jewish and Israeli interests by sending letters regularly to our elected officials, by sending letters to newspapers defending Jews and Israel and condemning our enemies,” he told JNS.
Criticizing Israeli government policies is fair game, as “it’s legitimate to criticize the policies of any government—America, Israel, France or Italy,” Klein said. “But when someone is only condemning the policies of Israel and not saying a word about the policies of Sudan or Somalia or Iran or Iraq or Syria or Turkey, then one has to become suspicious that it’s really Jew-hatred.”
“I criticize Israeli policy all the time,” he told JNS. “I condemn the Oslo Accords and the Gaza withdrawal. I condemn the establishment of a Palestinian state, when some Israelis support it. Obviously, I’m not antisemitic. That is legitimate.”
Klein, whose parents survived the Holocaust, told JNS that growing up, he often heard about “the horror of German and European public officials gaining support and plaudits for their overt Jew-hating statements and policies.”
“Eighty years later we Jews and others see a public overt Jew-hating Israel hater, Abdul El-Sayed, gain public support while legitimizing murderous physical attacks against Jewish children, proclaiming ‘hurt people hurt people,’” he said.
He noted that El-Sayed had “gleefully and proudly” campaigned with “an America-hating, Jew-hating, Israel hater, Hasan Piker, who hideously screamed that ‘America deserved 9-11.’”
“American Jews and others must shed their fears of falsely being called ‘Islamophobic’ and relentlessly and cogently condemn this radical Muslim’s and others’ non-stop bigotry and irrational hatred against Jews,” Klein told JNS. “Every Holocaust survivor and our murdered Holocaust victims demand it.”
