Abdul El-Sayed won’t say Iran is bigger threat than Israel, in first Michigan debate

Democratic Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed of Michigan refused to say on Thursday whether he thought Iran or Israel was a greater threat to the US, amid the progressive’s first debate with Republican US Rep. Mike Rogers for the key seat.

Pressed on the question, El-Sayed called it a “ridiculous hypothetical” and said both nations “have proven dangerous in their own way,” and accused Israel of dragging the US into a “stupid war” against the Islamic Republic that was driving up American gas prices.

“They wanted us to go to war with [Iran] and their war aims were what? The annexation of southern Lebanon,” the Democrat asserted, even though Israel makes no claim to that territory and only invaded after the Hezbollah terror group used it to launch an attack several days into the war.

When asked if he would support sending defensive weapons to Israel if it were attacked by another country, El-Sayed indicated he would not. Rogers, by contrast, said he “staunchly” supported “the right to exist for the Jewish state, and the right to defend itself in a very difficult neighborhood.”

“And if you think about why my opponent is so wrong on all of this,” he said of El-Sayed, “his biggest funders are from a group that supports the Muslim Brotherhood. He gets money from people who support, openly, Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda. His family was even included in those discussions.”

Rogers was likely referring to donations by members of the Council on American Islamic Relations, whose leader praised Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, though the group later condemned its attacks on civilians. CAIR has been accused by Israel, and several US states, of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which it denies.

El-Sayed’s father-in-law, a major donor to a political group endorsing the candidate, has also been noted as a major donor to the Islamic Society of North America, which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, over illicit funding for Hamas. Rogers also took aim at his opponent’s birth mother, Fatten Elkomy, for working for an aid organization named in similar trials, though she did not raise El-Sayed and there is no evidence she was aware of any wrongdoing by the group.

For his part, the Republican was asked about reports that his campaign asked the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee not to advertise on his behalf. Though he didn’t deny the report, Rogers repeated the Muslim Brotherhood accusation, and said: “Anybody that wants to help my campaign… I’ll take all of that help.”

“Yesterday was October 7th,” Rogers said, asserting that El-Sayed “could not bring himself to even acknowledge the pain, the terrorism, the rape, the murders, cutting off of women’s breasts, putting children in ovens and killing them in front of their families. Could not even muster.”

Reports that emerged after October 7 about children having been put in ovens was secondhand; however, the other atrocities, including systematic sexual assault, have been documented and attested to by eyewitnesses.

El-Sayed, who was criticized for not issuing any statement on the 3rd anniversary of the attack, responded that “I’ve condemned that. I didn’t turn it into political theater like you just did.”

Abdul El-Sayed is called out for making no statement on the October 7th attacks pic.twitter.com/u7URudHiPO

— DSA Watch (@DSA_Watch) October 8, 2026

Rogers also took aim at El-Sayed for owning property in the United Arab Emirates. The Democrat owns property in Dubai and India.

After the debate, El-Sayed was asked why he wanted Rogers to answer for his association with Trump while being dismissive of questions about his own association with Hasan Piker, an online commentator who’s repeatedly expressed support for Hamas and other Iran-backed terror groups, and who has argued that the US is a greater terrorist, “pound for pound,” than al-Qaeda.

“That’s a serious question?” retorted El Sayed, who invited Piker to campaign with him but has since condemned some of the pundit’s more extreme statements. “To equate the most powerful person in the world with a streamer in California seems to me to just be — I’m not going to use the word — but silly.”

Ossoff: ‘No doubt’ Israel violated laws of war in Gaza

Meanwhile, in Georgia, incumbent Senator Jon Ossoff declined to take a stance on the accusation that Israel committed genocide in Gaza during its campaign against Hamas, whose stated goals were to topple the terror regime and secure the return of Israeli hostages.

“The question of genocide is a question of whether a government has the specific intent to destroy a national or ethnic group, and that is a question for the International Criminal Court,” Ossoff responded.

Sen. @ossoff (D-GA) says whether Israel is committing a genocide is "a question for the International Criminal Court," but stands by his votes to block arms sales to Israel, and opponent @RepMikeCollins (R-GA) says Ossoff " hates Israel, loves Iran." pic.twitter.com/uFb29MwNc1

— CSPAN (@cspan) October 9, 2026

The ICC has sought Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest for alleged crimes against humanity in Gaza, but neither Israel nor the US have recognized the court’s jurisdiction, and the US has put sanctions on it, a measure that Ossoff’s opponent, Republican Mike Collins, supported.

“There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli forces prosecuting the war in Gaza violated the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law,” Ossoff said.

“I care deeply about the security of the Israeli people, among whom are members of my family,” added the candidate, who is Jewish. “I also care about innocent Palestinian life, and make no apology for my votes.”

Israel insists all its military campaigns are conducted in accordance with the laws of war, noting evacuation warnings and humanitarian aid as measures to protect civilians amid the conflict.

Ossoff did not directly respond to the question of whether he would support the latest military aid package to Israel.

Ossoff compares opponent to racist police in 1960s

The candidates also sparred over the Iran war, which Ossoff called a “disaster.” The Democrat has accused the administration of taking the US to war over “lies.”

Collins, by contrast, insisted that US President Donald Trump had every right to go in there and make sure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon,” arguing that international monitors “had already sounded the bells, the alarms that Iran was close to getting a nuclear weapon,” and that “Iran doesn’t only want to decimate and kill Israel, they want us as well.”

Ossoff also went after Collins for online white supremacist posts by a former aide and his son-in-law.

“You’ve hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office and you have promoted neo-Nazi content online,” Ossoff told his opponent. “If [civil rights icon and late US congressman] John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.”

Collins responded that “when I had things happen — I’m a businessman — I fired ‘em,” adding that he’s “condemned racism, antisemitism, hate.”

Leon Kraiem contributed to this report.