El-Sayed claimed terror attack on Michigan pre-school was because 'the circumstances happening 6,000 miles away' have consequences

The recently nominated Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, earlier this year said that the violent terrorist attack on a preschool in the state reflected Israel’s actions in the Middle East, arguing that “hurt people hurt people.” 

Speaking ahead of an April event at the University of Michigan alongside far-left political streamer Hasan Piker, El-Sayed condemned the attack but downplayed the violence by arguing that violence abroad has an impact on events within the US.

“Nothing justifies the heinous attack that we saw on Temple Israel,” El-Sayed said. “I also think it’s just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people, and the circumstances happening 6,000 miles away can affect the lives that we live here, and if we stand against violence, we’ve got to stand against violence, all violence.” 

The comments came after a gunman in a truck containing flammable materials rammed into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield. The gunman exchanged gunfire with security personnel before dying at the scene, and the FBI later characterized the attack as Hezbollah-inspired terrorism.

El-Sayed has made similar remarks on other occasions, having also suggested that terrorist attacks are the result of US actions that are “creating pain.” At a campaign stop in South Haven, a voter asked how he would "deal with hostages and terrorism as a US senator." El-Sayed responded by first saying, “I think the approach that we've often taken with terrorism has been to figure out how to leverage the might of the US military to go in and root out, right, certain terrorist organizations, et cetera. And where that's necessary, that's necessary.”

He then continued, “But I also think we need to be curious about why those things happen in the first place. Like, what drives somebody to want to commit such a heinous act?" He also referred to his background as a former public health professor, saying he is a “student of people's pain," and asked "Like, what, what happens when people are in pain?" 

El-Sayed narrowly won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday night, defeating Representative Haley Stevens by roughly one percentage point with 98.7 percent of the expected vote reported as of Wednesday. If elected, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim member of the US Senate. His campaign has received support from the Democratic Party’s far-left wing, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, both of whom have campaigned on his behalf.