The Democrats’ Fight Over Israel Is Just Beginning
Everyone at the table wanted the same thing: to see Democrats retake control of the Senate and repudiate President Trump.
Key points
- The party is debating how, and how hard, to push back now that it has power.
- If anything, the Jewish Democrats sharing bruschetta and pasta seemed a little shell-shocked, groggily emerging from a bitter Senate campaign and reckoning with what they described as one of the most difficult votes they had ever cast.
- D uring a swing through Detroit in the final days of the midterm campaign, former President Obama invoked the kind of gauzy pluralism that Democrats were so proud of during his presidency.
The following Sunday, Representative Haley Stevens withdrew her backing of El-Sayed and threw it to his opponent, the Republican Mike Rogers, citing, in part, El-Sayed’s stance on the issue that has divided Democrats more than any other this year: Israel.
Additional details
- He pointed out that Michigan had the opportunity to pull off an improbable feat: By electing Abdul El-Sayed to join Elissa Slotkin in the Senate, the state could turn its delegation into a walking symbol of buried enmities and transcendent harmony.
- [ Read: The Hasan Piker question ] Even as the group eagerly discussed the anticipated Democratic gains nationwide, there was a plaintive quality to their conversation about El-Sayed’s impending victory.
- Earlier that evening, the Ann Arbor–school–board member Rima Mohammad had none of that apprehension as she reflected on the Senate race outside a polling place across the street from Michigan Stadium.
- Mohammad, a Palestinian American whose grandparents were forcibly displaced from their homes in what is now Israel, in 1948, came to Ann Arbor for a residency at the University of Michigan, where she now teaches.
- A theater professor, a vice chair of the state Democratic Party, and the leader of its Jewish caucus, Alexander voted for El-Sayed with certitude but not excitement.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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