During an interview with ABC News released on Monday, Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed responded to a question on why he believes it’s so ridiculous to ask him if he believes Iran is a bigger threat than Israel by using an analogy where “Your friend and you are taking a hike in the woods and you see a bear and your friend goes and pokes the bear and now you’re running from the bear. Is it your friend or the bear who caused the danger? I’d say it’s both.” He also said that “I think we live, right now, in a world that has more war in it because of both the actions of Israel and Iran and us.” And “Israel is not actually our friend.”
Host Linsey Davis asked, “When you were recently asked at the debate if Israel or Iran is a greater threat to the United States, you described it as a ridiculous hypothetical. But, just to have the conversation, to understand, what do you think is ridiculous about asking a prospective senator about the greatest threats to this country?”
El-Sayed answered, “Well, Linsey, let’s say this: Your friend and you are taking a hike in the woods and you see a bear and your friend goes and pokes the bear and now you’re running from the bear. Is it your friend or the bear who caused the danger? I’d say it’s both. So, I just think that there’s this idea of like, who’s more, as if we’re grading risks. And I think we live, right now, in a world that has more war in it because of both the actions of Israel and Iran and us. And I would rather that we were not fighting stupid wars that are raising our gas prices. I would rather we are not fighting stupid wars that make it so that we can’t afford a second bag of groceries. And people don’t want to talk about the fact that it was the Israeli prime minister who has been trying to get an American president to fight this war for the better part of 40 years, who finally found a president dumb enough to do it. And here we are, fighting this war that we can’t get out of. So, to argue that, somehow, this war is not in part, or in large part because of Israel is just not paying attention to the facts. So, I would rather our tax dollars not be spent buying 2,000-pound bombs to the tune of $2.8 billion, when the kids in either The Soo or the city of Detroit go to schools that deserve so much more of that funding. And I don’t think an ally who uses you as a shield in war is actually an ally. And I think the broader part of the American public agrees with me on that.”
Davis followed up, “So, you don’t consider Israel to be an American ally?”
El-Sayed responded, “An ally that takes your money to push you into wars you shouldn’t be fighting is not an ally. It’s like, do you have kids? And if you have — your kid has a friend who keeps bumming off their money and then talks about them behind their back and then gets them into fights with other friends, what would you tell your kid to do with that friend? You’d probably tell them, maybe it’s not actually your friend. I think it’s time for us to realize that, like, Israel is not actually our friend. We are in a situation where we’re being pulled into wars we shouldn’t be fighting, where we’re running cover for a country that did genocide, that does apartheid on a daily basis, for what reason? To what end? How is this making us safer? And so, I just want us to be honest, objective about the situation. We’re running cover at the U.N., ICC, ICJ. We’re spending billions of dollars a year to subsidize their military. They’re pulling us into wars we shouldn’t be fighting. Some kind of friend, like, objectively speaking, right? And I understand that I’m in opposition to a long history of agreed-upon foreign policy here. But, like, just explain to me how we benefit here. Like, I just don’t — I don’t see it.”
Davis then asked, “There’s a saying that people use a lot now, which is true, right? But two things can be true at the same time, right? And so, it seems to me that we’re talking about, in this scenario, one could be opposed to America’s involvement in the war in Iran, and one could also say Iran is a serious threat to America.”
El-Sayed answered, “Oh, I’m saying both of those things. I didn’t say — the question that you asked me was, who is a bigger threat? I didn’t say one was not a threat. I just said both are a threat.”
Davis clarified, “Equally?”
El-Sayed responded, “I would say that, like, the current situation right now is that we are in a war we shouldn’t be fighting, in part because of what an ostensible ally got us to do. I just think, look, ask yourself, in my primary, AIPAC spent, what? $33 million to beat me. Why? And you can imagine how much money they spend every cycle to shape who serves in America’s Congress. The broad consensus in American politics right now is that we should not be subsidizing their military, that we should be rethinking that alliance. I might be the only person who’s out here openly saying it. And so, you should ask yourself, why are not, in a democracy, more American politicians asking the question that the broader public seems to want asked. Well, it’s because there is a special interest organization that spends a whole lot of money to make sure that any politician who asks those questions get[s] punished. I just happened to beat them.”
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