Nessel Accuses El-Sayed of Making Excuses for Hezbollah-Inspired Attack on Temple Israel

LANSING, MICHIGAN (VINnews) — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel publicly criticized Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed on Wednesday, saying his remarks after a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue amounted to making excuses for an attempt to murder more than 100 Jewish preschool children.

Nessel, who is Jewish, made the comments in an interview with The Atlantic’s David Frum. She said El-Sayed’s statement that “hurt people hurt people” after the March 12 attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township was widely seen as rationalizing the violence.

“A lot of us perceived that as sort of making excuses for somebody who sought to murder over 100 pre-K schoolchildren,” Nessel said. “And that’s the kind of mentality that bothers me a lot.”

“You can’t make excuses for that kind of domestic terrorism,” she added.

Federal investigators determined that Ayman Mohamed Ghazali, a 41-year-old Lebanese-born U.S. citizen from Dearborn Heights, rammed a pickup truck into the synagogue and opened fire. The FBI later described the attack as a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism intended to kill as many Jews as possible. More than 100 children were in the building’s early childhood program at the time. A security guard was injured. Ghazali died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a shootout with synagogue security.

Ghazali’s relatives, including a brother the Israeli military identified as a Hezbollah commander, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon days earlier.

El-Sayed first issued a written statement condemning the attack and expressing solidarity with the Jewish community. In a subsequent video, he referenced the deaths of the attacker’s family members overseas and said “hurt people hurt people,” while also condemning violence “6,000 miles away.”

Nessel contrasted that response with her own after the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand. She visited a mosque in Dearborn, wore a hijab out of respect and condemned the killings without speculating about the attacker’s motives or grievances.

She said El-Sayed has privately expressed regret in meetings with Jewish leaders since winning the Democratic nomination but has not publicly withdrawn the remarks.

“Here we are, it’s almost the end of August, and he still has not withdrawn those statements and said, I misspoke, or, I now recognize the harm that I caused,” Nessel said. “And it has me concerned that he really stands by them.”

Nessel also warned of “an enormous amount of anti-Semitism within the Democratic Party.” She said she does not feel safe attending her own state party’s convention as a Jewish person.

She noted that El-Sayed has shown “a real dearth” of knowledge about Jewish religious practice, Jewish history and Israel’s relationship to the Jewish people, including a post-primary reference to “breaking bread with Jews at Passover.”

Nessel said she has far more in common with El-Sayed on policy than with Republican nominee Mike Rogers and would “amputate [her] right arm” before voting for Rogers because she believes a Republican Senate majority would be dangerous. She has urged El-Sayed to listen to Jewish stakeholders, learn more about Judaism and Israel, and publicly change course.

El-Sayed’s campaign has said he condemned the attack immediately and stands against antisemitism in all its forms. Fox News Digital reported it sought comment from the campaign.