Lansing, Michigan —
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed apologized to Jewish Democrats on Saturday for saying “hurt people hurt people” as part of his response to a March attack on a synagogue near Detroit.
“My comments might have been misconstrued to be justifying something I did not intend to justify,” he told reporters after he addressed the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus at the state party’s convention in Lansing. “To anybody who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”
“We condemned that terrorist attack. We condemned it outright. What I was trying to do is offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context. And you don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain,” El-Sayed said.
During the attack, a man rammed his vehicle into a synagogue in West Bloomfield Township and exchanged gunfire with security officers in what the FBI called “a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism purposely targeting the Jewish community.”
