Let’s be clear: Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces are not morally equivalent.
World Israel News recently highlighted an astonishing comment that emerged from Democrat Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed in 2018, where he insisted that Israel’s military and Hamas are equally worthy of condemnation:
Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told a group of Jewish voters at a Detroit synagogue in 2018 that he views the Israeli military “the same way” that he views Hamas, according to video obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The left-wing Democrat, speaking at the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue in Detroit, offered those thoughts during his failed 2018 gubernatorial campaign when asked about a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
El-Sayed responded with a lengthy sermon about his “values” and “standing up for truth and international law” on “both sides” of the Middle East debate.
“I’ve always said I’ll condemn Hamas and what they do in the same way that I’ll condemn some of the human rights abuses that we see on the part of the IDF,” El-Sayed said.
Now he is running for Senate and is reportedly angling for a spot on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The 2018 video emerges as El-Sayed faces scrutiny over his family’s purported ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that spawned Hamas in Gaza in the 1980s.
World Israel News further went on to report on El-Sayed’s more recent remarks regarding Iran, Israel’s right to exist, and the October 7th massacre:
El-Sayed has a lengthy track record of equating Israel with America’s adversaries.
At last week’s debate against Republican Mike Rogers, El-Sayed sidestepped a question about whether Israel or Iran is a greater threat to America.
“I think both of them have proven dangerous in their own way,” El-Sayed said. “One at risk of attacking us. One getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”
El-Sayed, who has declined to say whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, has tried to repair his rocky relationship with Jewish Democrats.
El-Sayed also faced heat at last week’s debate for failing to issue a statement on the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks. He said he did not want to take advantage of the anniversary for political purposes.
How about just doing what’s right?
Here are five facts about the IDF and Hamas for Mr. El-Sayed and all those who claim that there is a moral equivalence between the Israeli Military and the terrorist organization in Gaza.
Fact number one: The objectives of the IDF and Hamas are fundamentally different.
The IDF’s stated mission is to defend Israel and its people. They have never called for the destruction of the Palestinian people. Hamas has issued unrelenting calls for the eradication of the Jewish State of Israel,
Destroying a country vs defending a country’s existence—those are fundamentally different purposes.
Fact number two: Hamas deliberately attacked civilians.
The October 7th assault targeted communities and involved murdering and abducting civilians.
Israel’s stated military objectives were to dismantle Hamas and recover the hostages. Those objectives cannot reasonably be treated as interchangeable.
Fact number three: the IDF undertook extensive efforts to warn civilians.
According to its published figures, from October 2023 to March 2024, the IDF dropped approximately 9.3 million evacuation leaflets, sent 15.5 million text messages, placed 100,000 evacuation telephone calls, and made 17 million recorded calls.
Those are concrete measures intended to move civilians away from combat.
In contrast, Hamas purposely targeted civilians, launching tens of thousands of missiles and rockets into Israel since the terror organization’s election in 2006. They deliberately target civilian neighborhoods to incur the largest number of casualties.
This is directly opposite of what the IDF does.
Fact number four: Hamas embedded military operations within their own civilian areas.
Hamas’ use of residential areas for military activity exposed civilians to danger.
Human Rights Watch documented indiscriminate rocket attacks launched from Gaza, while Israel has documented Hamas’s military infrastructure within and beneath civilian buildings. That battlefield context matters when assessing Israel’s response.
Fact number five: Their institutional standards differ.
Hamas is a designated terrorist organization in dozens of countries.
The IDF is a national military with a published code that requires protecting non-combatants and includes mechanisms for investigating soldiers’ conduct.
Those are meaningful differences in organizational character and accountability.
Did Hamas conduct an investigation into their militants’ behavior during the brutal and demonic massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7th? No, they cheered it on. So did, by the way, the majority of the Palestinians.
It’s not that hard to discern the difference.
If you see a moral equivalence between the IDF and Hamas, there is a verse in Isaiah 5:20 that should be brought to your attention: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
That verse describes precisely what we are seeing today—and it is accompanied by a warning.
We need to examine what we hear carefully. In Proverbs 18:17, we read: “The first one to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him.”
Let’s examine the facts. Let’s see if the claims stand up to the truth.
The bottom line is this: El-Sayed’s positions on Israel raise serious concerns—and that is an understatement. I would implore you to examine his statements, consider what they mean, and make an informed choice in these upcoming midterms.
This not only applies to El-Sayed; it applies to all candidates—Democrat and Republican. Examine the facts, pray, and vote. Your vote matters.
