Abdul El-Sayed’s Win Is a Landmark. But the Fight Is Far From Over.
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/abdul-el-sayed-aipac-win/
Abdul El-Sayed’s Win Is a Landmark. But the Fight Is Far From Over.
Even though the Palestine movement is on the march, we can’t afford any complacency.
Abdul El-Sayed speaks at an election night watch party in Detroit, Michigan, on August 4, 2026.
(Andrew Roth / Sipa USA via AP)Abdul El-Sayed’s Democratic primary win in Michigan is a watershed moment for the Palestine movement in the United States. El-Sayed ran on a platform that consistently centered Palestinian humanity and an end to US military funding to Israel—principled positions that his opponents viciously attacked him for. He faced over $60 million in outside spending for his chief rival, Haley Stevens—including around $30 million from AIPAC alone—and he triumphed.
Polling had predicted that El-Sayed would sweep the race by a wide margin; in the end, he won by under a percentage point. This is a reminder that challenging the status quo is an uphill battle, particularly when the stakes are as high as they are in the Michigan Senate race, and that the unprecedented levels of money our opponents are pouring into these campaigns are a serious threat. So we cannot let up.
We have to keep organizing and turning out our communities to vote in November. Luckily, our movement has shown that we know how to do that. This year, USCPR Action, the political arm of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, where I am the political director, endorsed our first slate of 16 federal and local candidates, each of whom committed to reject AIPAC and end US military funding to Israel. As of this writing, 14 of those candidates have gone through their primary elections—and 11 of them have won. From New York to Pennsylvania to Texas to Michigan, pro-Palestine candidates like Chris Rabb, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Dr. Adam Hamawy have broken new ground for our movement.
If you had told me that this is what the 2026 midterm cycle would look like in October 2023, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had told me an Egyptian Muslim Michigander running on a pro-Palestine platform would be the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, I’d be in even more disbelief.
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None of these wins would be possible without the relentless grassroots activism for Palestinian liberation over the past few years—and that work hasn’t been easy, to say the least. After October 7, 2023, Congress, which was already in AIPAC’s choke hold, became even more vehemently supportive of Israel and its genocide against the Palestinian people. In the immediate aftermath, senior Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Jacky Rosen, and Mark Kelly visited Israel. President Joe Biden refused to condemn any of Israel’s heinous massacres of Palestinians in Gaza, and instead gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a bear hug and an unrestricted supply of weaponry.
Congressional Democrats spent most of 2023 and ’24 coming up with new ways to justify genocide and attacking their colleagues who were courageous enough to remind them that Palestinian lives are precious. Rashida Tlaib was censured by the House, with 22 Democrats joining Republicans to rebuke her for daring to speak for her people as the only Palestinian member of Congress. Cori Bush introduced the Ceasefire Now resolution with only 13 cosponsors, facing similar accusations as Tlaib. Things in the Senate were even more dismal; even the most progressive senators like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had to be pressured by their staff and alumni to support a ceasefire in Gaza.
I watched all of these events unfold through my many identities: as a Palestinian American, a new mother, and my work at USCPR. In between trying to organize protests to push members of Congress to support a ceasefire, I watched the mass murder of my people livestreamed hour after hour, day after day. I will never forget the press conferences held by Palestinian children, or the days in which Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta stood over the dead bodies of people whom he and so many others had tried to save. Instead of blocking the bombs used to commit these heinous crimes, members of my own government tried to silence and criminalize our movement.
While I had one foot in navigating establishment politics, my other foot (and my whole heart) were with the grassroots activists fighting courageously for my people. These ordinary people sacrificed their jobs, degrees, and, in some cases, their freedom to end the genocide. Student organizers occupied their campuses to end their university’s investments in Israel. Union dockworkers refused to load ships that carried weapons supplies for Israel. Flotilla activists risked their lives trying to carry aid to Gaza. People confronted their elected officials, protested in mass actions across the country, and participated in boycotts and other BDS tactics.
My organization worked closely with this wave of new activists. We did rapid-response and skills trainings to channel their righteous anger into political action. We supported the launch of legislation like the Block the Bombs Act, which has reached 81 cosponsors as more congressional Democrats wake up to reality. We launched initiatives like Not My Tax Dollars to expose how American taxpayers’ money fuels genocide instead of funding care for our communities—a framing that is now widely used by progressive candidates like El-Sayed and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
This message deeply resonates with American voters who cannot reconcile paying $5 a gallon for gas and $6 for a loaf of bread while the US government spends $12 billion to arm and bankroll Israel. Voters want healthcare, affordability, and childcare at home—not money directed toward Israel’s murder of families in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran. Nor do they want foreign influence in elections or dark money buying political seats.
The Democratic establishment often tries to frame the issue of Palestine as unrelated to domestic concerns. But voters clearly understand that all of our lives are connected. This was clear in Michigan; as a Detroit community leader and soccer coach told Haley Stevens, “It’s not a candidate issue, it’s a human rights issue.… those 6-year-olds that I coach here, they’re just as precious as the 6-year-olds in Palestine.” Maybe this is why support for Israel is at a historic low in the US, as 68 percent of Democratic voters recognize that Israel is committing genocide.
A new theory of change in American politics has emerged, as AIPAC’s influence is dying, and unapologetic support of Palestinian liberation is proven to win again and again. Taking a cent of AIPAC money has become a political liability.
As Abdul El-Sayed eloquently said, “This is a moral Rorschach test. If you can’t identify the systematic murder of tens of thousands of kids as a genocide and then you wanna say you’re a fighter for human rights and dignity, that’s just hypocrisy.”
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The grassroots activism that has changed the American political landscape needs to keep doing what we do best. We cannot back down just because the political status quo has begun to crumble before our eyes. El-Sayed will need help from all of us to win in November. AIPAC has already said they will oppose him, meaning their misinformation machine will be on overdrive. All of this is preparation for the 2028 presidential election, where it will take our collective activism to make sure that Palestine is a litmus test for Democratic candidates, and a moral compass to guide voter decisions. We will need our legions of grassroots activists to keep reminding them that moral ambiguity on Palestine is no longer acceptable.
Palestinian activists often say that our collective liberation is intertwined, and that none of us will be truly free until Palestine is free. I believe that, and I want us to usher in a new politics rooted in humanism and collective liberation. One that is refreshingly honest and aspirational about who we could be collectively, if we were free of ethnonationalist, corporatist, and antidemocratic influences, and if our government funded care for our communities instead of killing.
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