Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed held a closed-door fundraiser in Dearborn alongside figures who have publicly praised Hamas and Hezbollah, called a slain terrorist leader a "hero," and said Israeli Jews should be sent "back to Poland", and his campaign kept the press out.
El-Sayed appeared Wednesday at the Bint Jebail Cultural Center in Dearborn, Michigan, where roughly 200 community leaders and organizers gathered for an event that the Washington Free Beacon reported was deliberately kept under the radar, no press, no public notice. Osama Siblani, head of the Arab American Political Action Committee and publisher of the Arab American News, spoke before El-Sayed took the stage. Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, an Iran-born cleric, was also present. Dearborn school board member Amer Zahr, a longtime El-Sayed ally, was spotted in the crowd.
The event, which a Dearborn.org recap said "successfully met its goal," is supposed to serve as a prelude to a get-out-the-vote rally planned for next month. But the roster of speakers and attendees raises a question El-Sayed has so far refused to answer directly: how closely is his Senate campaign tied to individuals who openly support designated terrorist organizations?
Siblani has referred to both Hamas and Hezbollah as "freedom fighters." At a 2022 rally, he urged the "fedayeen", Islamic militants, to "fight within [their] means" against Israel, whether with "stones," "guns," or "their hands." At a 2024 rally, he called slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a "hero" and declared that Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli Jews should be sent "back to Poland", the country where all six Nazi death camps were located.
Siblani declined to endorse Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential race after she issued a statement calling Nasrallah a terrorist. He posted on Facebook: "And, she wants our vote. In your dream [sic] Kamala!!!"
This is the man El-Sayed chose to share a stage with on Wednesday. El-Sayed has previously accepted the endorsement of Siblani's PAC, a pattern that suggests the relationship is not incidental but strategic.
Imam Elahi, for his part, eulogized the late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and bemoaned that Khamenei had been killed by "the most wretched hands on earth." That eulogy was documented by MEMRI, the Middle East media research institute.
Zahr, the Dearborn school board member who turned up at Wednesday's fundraiser, has publicly stated he "stands with" Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel. Last year, he stood in front of a banner bearing Nasrallah's image and proclaimed the late Hezbollah leader a "martyr" and "hero." In August 2024, he called Harris a "genocidal warmonger" and vowed not to support her for president.
Zahr's ties to El-Sayed stretch back years. In 2019, the two headlined a series of luxury yacht fundraisers for what the Free Beacon described as a Muslim Brotherhood-linked group. In May 2021, El-Sayed spoke at a rally alongside both Zahr and Siblani in protest of then-President Joe Biden.
The organizations these men have championed are not abstract. Israel's military has conducted sustained operations against Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon, including a major series of airstrikes that Breitbart reported destroyed underground command bunkers and killed at least 50 Hezbollah terrorists, including six senior commanders responsible for a planned invasion of northern Israeli communities. When Siblani and Zahr call these groups' leaders "heroes" and "martyrs," they are praising the leadership of organizations that plan mass-casualty attacks on civilians.
The fundraiser was not El-Sayed's only stop Wednesday. That evening, at a campaign event at the University of Michigan, a student asked him to denounce Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian regime's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. El-Sayed repeatedly dodged the question. He said he opposes U.S. support for "regime change."
That evasion fits a pattern. Earlier this year, on a private strategy call with campaign staffers, El-Sayed explained why he did not want to comment publicly on the death of Khamenei: "a lot of people in Dearborn are sad" over his death, he told his team. The calculus was political, not principled, he was managing the feelings of a constituency that mourned the supreme leader of a regime that executes dissidents and funds terrorism.
El-Sayed has also called for the arrest of Netanyahu for "war crimes." His campaign did not respond to requests for video footage of the Dearborn fundraiser.
His opponent in the Michigan Senate race has already drawn attention to El-Sayed's associations. Mike Rogers branded El-Sayed "anti-American" over resurfaced remarks about the September 11 attacks, a charge that gains weight when El-Sayed's campaign partner is Hasan Piker, a socialist influencer who has stated that "America deserved 9/11" and that Israel is "much worse" than Hamas.
Federal Election Commission filings show that the Unity & Justice Fund, a super PAC supporting El-Sayed, recently paid $400,000 to Chase & Porter, a Dearborn-based consulting firm, for "canvassing" work. Chase & Porter is owned by Mallak Beydoun, who also serves as chief of staff to Dearborn Heights mayor Mo Baydoun. Baydoun himself spoke at Wednesday's fundraiser.
The financial arrangement links El-Sayed's campaign apparatus directly to the political infrastructure of the majority-Arab city that the Free Beacon described as the hub of his political support. Many of the fundraiser's attendees were vocal leaders of the "Uncommitted" movement, the anti-Israel faction that vowed to boycott the Biden-Harris ticket during the 2024 presidential primaries over U.S. support for Israel in its conflict with Hamas.
El-Sayed himself backed the Uncommitted movement in early 2024. Harris went on to lose Michigan in the general election. Biden administration officials had attempted to apologize to Dearborn's Arab community, but the damage was done.
Now Harris has resurfaced on El-Sayed's behalf. On Tuesday, one day before the Dearborn fundraiser, she appeared alongside El-Sayed at a roundtable event in Detroit focused on Black maternal health, where she defended DEI. Harris had not been active on El-Sayed's campaign prior to that appearance.
El-Sayed's pattern is consistent. He shares stages with men who praise Hamas and Hezbollah. He fundraises alongside activists who proclaim terrorist leaders as martyrs. He privately shields his constituency from any criticism of the Iranian regime. He publicly refuses to denounce the IRGC. And he campaigns with an influencer who said America deserved the worst terrorist attack in its history.
These are not guilt-by-association smears. These are choices, repeated, deliberate, and strategic. El-Sayed chose the venue. He chose the speakers. He chose to keep the press out. His own imam eulogized a Hamas leader as a "heroic martyr" and a "symbol of jihad," and El-Sayed has never distanced himself from those remarks.
The broader pattern among Democratic candidates is not limited to Michigan. A Florida Democratic Senate candidate paid thousands to a staffer who praised Hamas and wished Zionists would "die", another case of party figures maintaining financial and political ties to individuals who openly support terrorist organizations.
Michigan voters deserve to know who is in the room when their Senate candidate raises money behind closed doors. El-Sayed has made that as difficult as possible. The guest list tells you why.
