Jewish Letter In Support Of El-Sayed Includes Numerous Fringe Figures
Jewish Insider
Marc Rod
September 28, 2026
A recent open letter from Jewish Michiganders expressing support for Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed includes a series of figures with fringe or extremist views and backgrounds alongside several prominent members of the Jewish community.
El-Sayed’s campaign promoted the letter, which includes more than 800 total signatories, as a show of force for the candidate as he works to court Jewish voters as the general election nears. Meanwhile, other prominent leaders in the Jewish community have said they are not ready to vote for El-Sayed without changes in his stances on Israel or they plan to support his Republican opponent, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI).
The fringe figures on the letter also highlight the campaign’s ongoing struggles in appealing to mainstream Jews in Michigan — further highlighted by a recent video released by El-Sayed for Rosh Hashanah that featured two women connected to the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace. State Rep. Noah Arbit, who founded the Michigan Jewish Democratic Caucus, condemned the video as “tokenism.”
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Perhaps the most widely discussed signatory on the list has been Liano Sharon, a progressive activist and Michigan Democratic Party officer facing disciplinary action from the state party for suggesting that Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) — whom he previously described as a “neo-Nazi” — should face a Nuremberg-style trial and potentially “the gallows” for her support for Israel, though he also said he does not support the death penalty.
In an email to Jewish Insider, he affirmed that he does consider her a neo-Nazi “based purely on her conduct supporting Nazi-like atrocities like apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide” but emphasized that he does not “support the death penalty even for neo-Nazis” and that he would “advocate commutation” for Stevens and others who could be “convicted and sentenced to death.”
“Reichstag legislators were sentenced to the gallows at Nuremberg for similar legislative support for Nazi atrocities as Stevens gave to Zionist atrocities,” Sharon said in a separate email exchange he released publicly. “Why should our legislators be treated differently if the investigation concludes they committed neo-Nazi atrocities?”
Sharon told JI that he is being wrongly punished by the Michigan Democratic Party and called on it to take down a post accusing him of harassing Stevens.
Sharon suggested that Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Gary Peters (D-MI), former Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) should face similar investigation and potential punishment. He has said that former Vice President Kamala Harris, Slotkin and Peters are also neo-Nazis.
Sharon has also previously declared that Zionism and Judaism are separate and incompatible and declared that Attorney General Dana Nessel was not Jewish because of her support for Israel, was a neo-Nazi sympathizer and is “complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
And he denied that the attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., and its attached preschool was antisemitic. He affirmed that view in his email to JI, arguing that “suggesting [the attacker’s] motives were anything other than ***revenge against Israel*** for the ***Israeli airstrike that murdered his family in Lebanon*** days before is absurd mental gymnastics,” while also calling it a “horrific act of terrorism against civilians, which I condemn without qualification.”
In his email to JI, Sharon said, “That’s what Zionism has always been: antisemitic Jew hate so deep, they want to replace us all. Just like Hitler wanted to replace us all with Aryans, Zionists want to replace all Jews with Zionists.”
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Others who signed the letter have also expressed fringe views. Numerous signatories have accused Israel of genocide and have histories of anti-Israel advocacy, some of them being affiliated with JVP.
Several signatories have also been involved with Students for Justice in Palestine and campus anti-Israel advocacy, including serving as members or organizers of anti-Israel encampments on campuses. One was arrested for destruction of property when police cleared the encampment at the University of Michigan, though charges were later dropped.
At least 18 signatories on the letter signed onto a separate national statement demanding that institutions of higher education cut ties with mainstream Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League working to combat antisemitism on college campuses.
One signatory, a university professor, appeared to advocate for violence against “racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker[s]” on campuses, for which he was suspended without pay and referred to law enforcement.
Another signatory asserted that U.S. officials “had reasons to expect a terrorist attack would occur” on 9/11 “and were far more interested in exploiting than in preventing” such an attack. He separately described Israel as “overtly Jewish-supremacist.”
Yet another, a former public official, made racist comments at a public city council meeting, for which she later apologized and resigned.
One signatory, an encampment organizer at the University of Michigan, argued in support of calls for intifada and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” rejecting the notion that such slogans — which Jews say invoke campaigns of terrorism against Israel and the wholesale elimination of the Jewish state — are violent or antisemitic.
One was an organizer in the anti-Israel Uncommitted Movement in Michigan.
And one self-publishes a website where he has discussed his ties to a 1990s school shooting case, in which he was charged and detained as a co-conspirator for more than a month, though charges were later dropped. He denies any involvement or wrongdoing. He also discusses, on the website, his conviction and jailing for purchasing machine gun parts online in the early 2000s and constructing an illegal machine gun.
Read more here.