Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is rolling out campaign ads showcasing Jewish supporters, but a closer look at the people in those videos reveals deep ties to anti-Israel organizations that excused the October 7 massacre.
El-Sayed, a Democrat, posted an ad on September 8 featuring Daniel Klein, a former journalist turned activist who wore a yarmulke and posed with his family while the candidate promised he'd "be thinking about the people here" in Michigan. Eleven days later, on September 19, El-Sayed released a Rosh Hashanah video starring a mother-daughter pair, Missy and Elaine Shifman, who read prayers from a card at their family home and praised El-Sayed's Medicare for All platform.
The videos are part of a broader effort branded "Jews for Abdul," launched by Barbara Weinberg Barefield ahead of El-Sayed's August primary against pro-Israel congresswoman Haley Stevens. But as the Washington Free Beacon reported, the Jewish supporters El-Sayed chose to feature are not mainstream community voices. They are activists connected to Jewish Voice for Peace, the self-described "largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world", a group that, hours after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, referred to the terrorists as "Palestinian fighters from Gaza."
Klein's path from reporter to campaign prop traces a familiar arc. He covered left-wing Jewish activists during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011 for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, then left journalism entirely in 2012 to become what he called a "community organizer." He worked at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee before landing at Detroit Jews for Justice in November 2018.
Months before joining that organization, Klein was arrested at a Michigan Poor People's Campaign rally, a series of protests against "violence, racism, environmental devastation and poverty" that used what organizers described as "creative performative arrest." His own online biography at Detroit Jews for Justice noted matter-of-factly that he "currently awaits trial for misdemeanor charges incurred during the Poor People's Campaign." He also mentioned owning "a kitten named Kovner."
Klein did not respond to a request for comment.
Detroit Jews for Justice, the organization Klein joined, describes itself as a "social justice organization" that advocates "for housing justice, water rights, [and] reproductive justice." It claims that "Israel/Palestine is not a core focus of our organizing." But the group's own actions tell a different story. Its annual gala last year featured El-Sayed and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) on the host committee, with CAIR Michigan, an organization that has drawn scrutiny for its stance on Hamas, serving as a sponsor.
Detroit Jews for Justice also issued a public statement opposing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's widely adopted definition of antisemitism. The group argued the IHRA definition "does not adequately address the most dangerous form of antisemitism experienced by Jewish communities in America: white supremacist terror" and fails to provide "an analysis of solidarity and intersecting oppressions."
Missy and Elaine Shifman, the mother-daughter pair in El-Sayed's Rosh Hashanah video, had already appeared in a July 29 video produced for Jewish Voice for Peace itself. In that JVP clip, Elaine Shifman declared that "being Jewish has always been closely tied to fighting for human rights and social justice for all people." Missy Shifman praised El-Sayed as "someone who believes in the rights and freedoms of every person, no exceptions, including Palestinians."
Neither Missy nor Elaine Shifman responded to a request for comment.
The family's political connections extend further. Missy Shifman's sister, Pamela Shifman, serves as president of Democracy Alliance, a liberal megadonor network. A 2021 Jewish Telegraphic Agency profile described the Shifmans as "a family of liberal Jewish activists" and noted that for Pamela, "melding Jewish expression with social justice was embedded in her upbringing in suburban Detroit."
El-Sayed's relationship with JVP is not incidental. The organization's political arm, JVP Action, formally endorsed him in June 2026. Congregation T'chiyah, the Reconstructionist synagogue that founded Detroit Jews for Justice, hosted El-Sayed at its Passover seder during his primary campaign against Stevens. JVP itself encouraged members to attend T'chiyah during the 2025 High Holidays, describing the congregation as "very intergenerational and queer; predominantly white Ashkenazi space with anti-racist values."
At least two members of Detroit Jews for Justice's Political Evaluation Team, the body that helps decide which candidates the group supports, are also JVP members. The overlap between the two organizations is not a coincidence. It is a shared network, and El-Sayed sits comfortably at its center.
Jewish Voice for Peace's record on October 7 deserves plain scrutiny. Hours after Hamas murdered roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel, JVP released a statement that referred to the attackers as "Palestinian fighters from Gaza." The statement accused Israel of "threatening to commit war crimes against besieged Palestinians" and declared that the "source of all this violence" was "Israeli apartheid and occupation, and United States complicity in that oppression."
Nine days later, the Detroit chapter of JVP, founded by the same Barbara Weinberg Barefield who launched "Jews for Abdul", hosted a rally accusing Israel of "genocide" and "apartheid" and demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Barefield herself has said that Israel and the United States are guilty of "horrific war crimes" and "genocide," and she backed the "Uncommitted" movement that pressured Democrats to break with Israel.
JVP's history includes hosting an event featuring Rasmea Odeh, a woman convicted for bombing a Jerusalem supermarket. And in 2025, Elias Rodriguez, the man who killed two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., had shared social media posts promoting a JVP-led anti-Israel protest in Chicago. The organization's own headline for its Odeh event read: "Jewish Voice Peace Proud Host Palestinian Organizer Rasmea Odeh."
This is the organization whose members El-Sayed chose to feature in his campaign ads aimed at reassuring Jewish voters.
El-Sayed's outreach to Jewish voters comes against a backdrop of unresolved tension. After an attack on Detroit's Temple Israel, El-Sayed offered a response that many in the Jewish community found inadequate. He said:
"I also think it's just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people, and the circumstances happening 6,000 miles away can affect the lives that we live here, and if we stand against violence, we've got to stand against violence, all violence."
The remark appeared to contextualize an attack on a synagogue by pointing to events in the Middle East, a framing that drew immediate backlash. El-Sayed later issued a statement: "If my statement caused pain, I'm sorry. That was not what I intended." He recently called the comment "a mistake."
That apology did not satisfy everyone. The New York Times reported that it "fell short with some Jewish Democrats in part because he seemed to be seeking forgiveness for the timing of his remark rather than its substance." Meanwhile, Michigan Jewish leaders have pressed El-Sayed on his positions, and his associations continue to raise questions that his campaign videos have not answered.
El-Sayed's relationship with streamer Hasan Piker, whom the American Jewish Committee has described as someone who "spreads antisemitism to millions", has also been at issue among Jewish Democrats in Michigan. And his broader circle of associations has drawn sustained attention, including photographs with Nation of Islam figures and scrutiny of his mosque connections.
The New York Times ran a headline reading "Jewish Leaders in Michigan Urge Support for El-Sayed's Senate Bid." But the leaders El-Sayed has actually put in front of cameras are not the kind of mainstream Jewish voices that headline might suggest. They are activists embedded in an organization that whitewashed a massacre, opposed the standard international definition of antisemitism, and hosted a convicted bomber at its events.
El-Sayed's Republican rival has already called him out on other fronts. The "Jews for Abdul" campaign gives Michigan voters one more reason to look past the branding and examine who is actually standing behind the candidate, and what they believe.
When a candidate has to build a coalition of Jewish supporters from the membership rolls of an organization that called Hamas terrorists "Palestinian fighters," the outreach is not reassurance. It is a tell.
