CAM-Action, a new advocacy arm of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, told JNS that it is launching a radio ad buy of more than $250,000 against Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan.
The ad, which was provided to JNS, features Taylor Weintraub, whose son was in a classroom at Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich., during a March 12 terror attack.
Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, rammed a truck with explosives into the synagogue, striking a security guard. Ghazali shot at security officers before shooting and killing himself. Some 140 children and staff members were inside at the time.
“I never screamed or cried harder,” Weintraub says in the ad. “Is my son safe? Are his friends safe?”
“When Abdul El-Sayed said, ‘Hurt people hurt people,’ he gave an excuse to someone who wanted to murder children,” she says.
Members of Ghazali’s family were reportedly killed in an Israeli strike in Lebanon in March, including a brother whom the Israeli military identified as being a Hezbollah commander.
El-Sayed denounced the attack on the synagogue but also said that “hurt people hurt people.” He later apologized “to anybody who feels like my comments might have been hurtful.”
“I’m a lifelong Democrat, but this election, I’m voting for Mike Rogers,” Weintraub said in the ad, of the former Republican congressman and GOP nominee in the race. “Abdul El-Sayed should never be our senator.”
Arie Lipnick, a spokesman for CAM-Action, told JNS that “Abdul El-Sayed’s own overt antisemitism, his support from antisemitic voices like Tucker Carlson and Hasan Piker, his longstanding ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and his heartless justification of the Temple Israel terror attack are all wildly disqualifying.”
“There is no place in the U.S. Senate for a terror apologist who justified the attempted murder of 110 Jewish preschoolers as ‘hurt people hurt people,’ and CAM-Action will share that message with Michigan voters through Election Day,” Lipnick said.
The ad will run in more than 1,600 spots across 25 radio stations, including in the Detroit, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and Flint markets, according to a CAM-Action source. The buy runs from Saturday through Election Day and targets women and swing voters.
The ad is a recut of a 60-second digital ad from Democrats for Mike Rogers, a CAM-Action source said.
“We partnered with them to amplify their initial buy, recut for radio and extend to new markets across the state,” the source told JNS.
CAM-Action is spending more than $250,000 on the Michigan ad buy, according to the source. It is part of the advocacy arm’s soft launch.
“The 501(c)(4) status allows for a more robust U.S. advocacy agenda and also for direct engagement in political campaigns where antisemitism is a key issue,” the source told JNS.
The organization plans a formal launch after Election Day.
