In Michigan, AIPAC Is Playing With Fire
As an ostensible defender of Jewish rights, it is unwise to behave like the stuff of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
It’s coming down to the wire in the Democratic Michigan Senate primary, in which the former state public health official Abdul El-Sayed faces Rep. Haley Stevens. The race has been quite bitter and personal – a recent debate featured a lot of heated personal attacks – but the principal policy question of the election has revolved around support for Israel. El-Sayed is a blistering critic of that country, while Stevens has long been an ardent Zionist, most recently voting against the Block the Bombs Act, which would have cut military aid to Israel.
However, another issue related to Israel has been even more important: AIPAC. The Israel-supporting group has spent a whopping $46 million on Stevens’s campaign, both directly and through affiliated committees. It’s the most AIPAC has ever spent on a single race, and it’s most of the reason Stevens has a 12-1 advantage in advertising spending. Given how close the race has been in polling, it’s fair to conclude that Stevens would be getting wiped out without so much support.
El-Sayed has attacked this immense spending, arguing that it is blatantly corrupt and implies Stevens’s recent moderation in support for Israel is insincere. In response, numerous critics have said or implied that he is antisemitic. At the Jerusalem News Syndicate, Jonathan S. Tobin accused El-Sayed of depicting Stevens’s “campaign as solely a manifestation of a Jewish plot to buy American elections for the sake of Israel.” Several Jewish leaders in Michigan told The Times of Israel they were considering sitting the election out or supporting the Republican should El-Sayed win, because he is “portending an existential threat to the national Jewish community.” Stevens herself upped the ante with a tweet on Elon Musk’s X, asserting that “Everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans.”