Rabbi Asher Lopatin has spent years traveling to the Middle East seeking Israel-Arab peace. He usually votes Democrat. But this November, he's voting for Republican Mike Rogers for U.S. Senate in Michigan.
The reason has a name: Hasan Piker.
Piker, the Twitch streamer who served as a campaign surrogate for Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, delivered this gem during a recent broadcast: "If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews."
That's not a critique of foreign policy. That's a threat — phrased as a prediction — that Jewish Americans should expect violence for holding political opinions. And the man who said it was standing next to El-Sayed at his Detroit primary night party.
El-Sayed, the former Wayne County Health Department director and failed 2018 gubernatorial candidate, narrowly beat Rep. Haley Stevens in the primary. He'd be the nation's first Muslim senator if elected. Now he's scrambling to create distance from Piker, telling Fox News, "I want to be crystal clear, nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople." His communications director, Roxie Richner, added that El-Sayed "remains in regular dialogue with Jewish leaders across the state."
Dialogue. After months of buddy-buddy campaigning with a man who just told Jewish Americans to watch their backs.
El-Sayed went further, saying his "commitment to Jewish safety is the same as my commitment to the safety of my own daughters. Antisemitism is a scourge, and we need to address it in all its forms." Noble words from a candidate who declined to answer whether Israel has the right to exist, called Israeli leadership guilty of "genocide," used the word "bloodthirsty" to describe Israel's military operations in Gaza, and has called for abolishing ICE and ending unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel.
Rep. Hillary Scholten, a fellow Michigan Democrat, called Piker "a hack who thrives on hate." Rogers was less diplomatic: "More calls for violence coming out of the El-Sayed campaign. Here is his running mate, Hasan Piker, saying that if AMERICAN JEWS support Israel, they will be violently targeted because of it. Absolutely DISGUSTING."
Rogers — a former FBI agent who lost his previous Senate race by just 20,000 votes — called El-Sayed's sudden pivot "the epitome of what a conman does — says one thing when it serves him and another when it doesn't."
The real story isn't El-Sayed's word salad about safety and dialogue. It's the open letter. Jewish Insider reports that Jewish Democratic leaders are now circulating a letter endorsing Rogers — the Republican — over their own party's nominee. One anonymous Jewish leader involved told Fox News, "This is sort of a do-or-die moment. There are many lifelong Democrats who are feeling homeless. It's not just a leftward drift but has turned into an anti-Jewish drift as well."
Joan Lowenstein, endorsement chair of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus and a Michigan Democratic Party Central Committee member, wouldn't join the letter. But even she acknowledged the pain: the people signing it "are passionate about this and feel it's an existential issue, and I think that represents a lot of people. And, so, they have to do what they have to do."
When your own party's caucus chair is publicly explaining why members are defecting, the distancing campaign isn't working.
El-Sayed's team wants to change the subject. Richner said the campaign will focus on "gas, groceries, good schools, and healthcare" while "politicians and pundits try to make this race about a Twitch streamer." That framing works only if you forget that the candidate chose the Twitch streamer as his surrogate. Piker didn't wander onto the stage uninvited. He was brought there.
State Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Jewish Democrat running for Congress in Michigan's 11th District, now has to navigate a general election where voters in his own community are openly backing the other party's Senate candidate. That's the downstream damage when a party treats antisemitism as a PR problem instead of a moral one.
Rabbi Lopatin put it plainly: El-Sayed "has shown contempt for the Jewish community and, frankly, for American values by making Hasan Piker, a vicious antisemite and racist, his campaign surrogate and somebody he buddies up with."
The party of tolerance found its limit. It just happens to be tolerance for Jewish Americans feeling safe in their own country.
