Michigan Senate Candidate El-Sayed Condemns Controversial Ad Blaming Aid to Israel for Inflation
Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed faced severe criticism after a political action committee ad blamed U.S. military aid to Israel for rising American grocery prices. Jewish groups, political opponents, and even the PAC's co-founder strongly condemned the video.
Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Michigan, faced intense backlash after a controversial political action committee ad linked the cost of living and soaring grocery prices in America to U.S. military aid to Israel.
The ad, produced by the left-wing political action committee Rebellion PAC, features a supermarket scene where a woman tells her partner to return a seven-dollar carton of eggs. When the man asks if the children no longer like eggs, she cynically replies that they need to save the money to "kill Palestinians," directly criticizing American military aid to Israel. According to reports citing Brown University's Costs of War project, U.S. military assistance to Israel totaled over 21 billion dollars between the fall of 2023 and the fall of 2025.
The video, which amassed over six million views on the social media platform X, also targeted Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, who has pledged unconditional support for Israel. The voiceover remarks that Rogers is in favor of progressive gender pronouns, while images of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and right-wing ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir appear on screen. The video was published by Cenk Uygur, host and CEO of The Young Turks network, who founded the PAC in 2020. Despite its wide reach, the financial investment behind the ad was minimal.
Campaign Disavowal and Broad Condemnation
El-Sayed's campaign quickly distanced itself from the commercial. Campaign spokeswoman Roxy Richner stated unequivocally that the ad has no connection to them, emphasizing that El-Sayed is solely focused on pushing back against Trump's agenda.
El-Sayed, a vocal critic of Israel's military campaign in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks in which approximately 1,200 people were killed, has recently sought to build support among Jewish voters. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Rogers stated that El-Sayed and his supporters spread anti-Israel hatred, while a group of Michigan rabbis argued the ad relies on classic antisemitic tropes.
Pro-Israel U.S. Representative Haley Stevens strongly condemned the ad as fear-mongering regarding Israel, and Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, labeled the spot a case study in antisemitism. In a surprising twist, Brianna Wu, who co-founded Rebellion PAC with Uygur before stepping away in 2022, also denounced the video as a wild antisemitic message. Cenk Uygur, however, refused to apologize, dismissing the accusations of antisemitism as ridiculous and asserting the ad addresses foreign government spending rather than Jewish people.
