Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has apologised to the state’s Jewish Democratic Caucus for comments he made after a March attack on a synagogue near Detroit.
The 41-year-old Democrat addressed the caucus on Saturday at the Michigan Democratic Nominating Convention in Lansing, where he acknowledged that his remarks had caused pain and said they had not been intended to justify the attack.
“I made a mistake,” Mr El-Sayed said, according to reports of the meeting. He added: “If my statement caused pain, I’m sorry. It was not what I intended to do.”
His comments followed an attack on Temple Israel in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield, where a man rammed a vehicle into the building and opened fire on a security guard before dying by suicide.
In a video response at the time, Mr El-Sayed condemned the incident but also said: “Hurt people hurt people.” He had referred to the attacker’s family members reportedly being killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, linking the synagogue attack to wider violence in the Middle East.
Critics accused him of providing an excuse for the attack. Addressing the criticism on Saturday, Mr El-Sayed said he had been trying to offer “context”, but accepted that it was not the right moment.
“What I was trying to do was offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context,” he said. “You don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain.”
The apology comes as Mr El-Sayed seeks to consolidate Democratic support after winning the party’s Senate nomination and amid tensions over his views on Israel and allegations of antisemitism surrounding his political associations.
