Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is sounding the alarm from inside her own party.
The Jewish Democrat says she no longer feels safe attending the Michigan Democratic Party convention because of what she described as “an enormous amount of anti-Semitism within the Democratic Party” — and she singled out Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed for what she viewed as an unacceptable response to an attempted synagogue massacre.
Federal investigators say the attacker who targeted Temple Israel earlier this year had been inspired and radicalized by Hezbollah and intended to kill as many Jewish people as possible.
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El-Sayed’s response included the phrase: “Hurt people hurt people.”
Nessel said that landed badly.
“A lot of us perceived that as sort of making excuses for somebody who sought to murder over 100 pre-K schoolchildren,” she told The Atlantic’s David Frum.
Michigan’s Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel calls out Abdul El Sayed for previous comments defending terrorist that attacked West Bloomfield’s Jewish temple. This attack targeted school children. pic.twitter.com/X3ARMigyHR
— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) August 26, 2026
“That’s the kind of mentality that bothers me a lot.”
Nessel contrasted El-Sayed’s response with her own reaction to the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre.
She recalled visiting a Dearborn mosque, wearing a hijab out of respect and condemning the attack without qualifications.
“I didn’t try to get into, like, what were the motivations of the person who killed these people,” Nessel said. “I just condemned it unequivocally, and I think that’s what people should have done with Temple Israel. You can’t make excuses for that kind of domestic terrorism.”
Nessel did credit El-Sayed for reaching out to Jewish leaders in recent months. But she said private regret is not enough.
“I think privately, he will say that he regrets having made those remarks,” she said.
“But here we are, it’s almost the end of August, and he still has not withdrawn those statements and said, I misspoke, or, I now recognize the harm that I caused by making those statements.”
“And it has me concerned that he really stands by them.”
That is a remarkable warning coming from one of Michigan’s most prominent Democrats.
The party’s Senate nominee isn’t being accused of going too far by Republicans.
He’s being called out by his own Democratic attorney general.
Michigan’s own Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel is publicly ripping her party’s U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed for what she calls making excuses for domestic terrorism — specifically his response to the Hezbollah-inspired attack on Temple Israel synagogue where a… pic.twitter.com/6B3vgMK878
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) August 27, 2026
