On 60 Minutes, El-Sayed Gave Palestine a Plain 'Yes.' Israel's Right to Exist Came With a Condition

Michigan's Democratic Senate nominee had a simple question in front of him on national television two days before the election. Does Israel have a right to exist? Abdul El-Sayed's answer on Sunday's 60 Minutes came with a condition attached. The same question about Palestine got a one-word yes.

El-Sayed, who faces Republican Mike Rogers on Tuesday in a race that could decide control of the Senate, raised Palestine himself. "I don't ever get the question of, 'Does Palestine have the right to exist?'" he told CBS correspondent Ross Douthat.

"Does Palestine have the right to exist?" Douthat asked. "Yes," El-Sayed said.

"Does Israel have the right to exist?" "Yes. If there is a shared understanding," El-Sayed answered. When Douthat tried to stop him on the qualifier, El-Sayed pressed on. "I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike," he said. "If the Palestinian people decide and the Israeli people decide that they want two states for two people, and they decide that on equal terms, I'm for it. If they decide that they want one state shared in a different way, I'm for that."

A "one state shared in a different way" is not the Jewish state that exists today. No condition came attached to his yes for Palestine.

"The state of Israel did a genocide"

Asked what is wrong with America's relationship with Israel, El-Sayed gave three answers. Washington talks about a two-state solution "only to aid, arm, and abet the very people who are trying to foreclose on the possibility of a second state," he said. "I don't pay my taxes to buy another country a bomb or a tank. That's Israel." Third: "the state of Israel did a genocide." CBS said he is running on an arms embargo on Israel.

Rogers didn't hedge. "I passionately defend Israel's right to defend itself and to exist as a Jewish state," he told CBS. "That sets me at odds with my opponent right off the bat. He refuses to even acknowledge that Israel has the right to exist." On the genocide charge: "His language is wrong."

Rogers also described what he hears on campus. "There are Jewish students at [the] University of Michigan that my wife and I talk to who have to hide their Star of David to walk across campus because the harassment is so bad," he said. "Think of that."

"Hurt people hurt people"

60 Minutes also aired El-Sayed's response to the terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue and preschool in March. He condemned the violence, "There is never a justification for attacking innocent people or houses of worship. Never," and then added "Hurt people hurt people," which CBS said seemed to put blame on Israel. He later apologized.

Asked whether he was saying enough to reassure Michigan's roughly 100,000 Jewish voters, El-Sayed said, "Wherever our disagreements are when it comes to Israel, there are a lot more things that we agree on here. When it comes to standing up for Jewish-Americans, I will be right there."

Why it matters Tuesday

CBS said Michigan's more than 200,000 Arab Americans are expected to turn out for El-Sayed in record numbers, while the Rogers campaign hopes Jewish voters, usually a reliable Democratic group, can help put him over. The interview aired hours after Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost the primary to El-Sayed, endorsed Rogers.

El-Sayed calls himself "a capitalist," not a socialist. He is running on "Medicare For All," paid for in part with a sweeping tax on billionaire wealth, CBS reported. Polls open Tuesday morning.