El-Sayed’s obsession with Israel is coming to California

Abdul El-Sayed’s recent victory in Michigan should be a wake-up call for California.

The political movement that helped propel El-Sayed to victory is already flourishing here, and its loudest obsession is a tiny country thousands of miles away.

Israel.

At a time when Californians are struggling with housing costs, homelessness, crime, failing schools and the basic affordability of raising a family, why are local politicians spending precious time turning city halls into debating chambers on the Middle East conflict?

Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Abdul El-Sayed speaks at a General Election Kickoff Rally for Michigan Democrats at Renaissance High School on Friday, August 7, 2026, in Detroit. (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) AP Photo/Paul Sancya

Richmond’s City Council passed a resolution accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” calling for an end to US military aid to Israel, and weighing in on Israeli military policy.

Santa Monica’s City Council debated and passed its own Gaza ceasefire resolution.

Whatever your views on the war, ask yourself a simple question: Is this why we elect city council members?

Can Richmond negotiate a Middle East peace agreement? Can Santa Monica determine American foreign policy?

Of course not.

But they can fix potholes. They can address homelessness. They can improve public safety, support small businesses and make their cities work better for the people who actually live there.

Yet anti-Israel activism has increasingly become a defining political cause on the far left. AP Photo/Paul Sancya

That should be their focus.

Yet anti-Israel activism has increasingly become a defining political cause on the far left.

We saw the intensity of that movement on college campuses, including UCLA. We see it in the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and ending US military assistance to Israel. And now we see politicians associated with this movement gaining power from LA to New York to Michigan.

LA voters should pay particular attention.

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Four members of the 15-member Los Angeles City Council belong to DSA, and Councilwoman Nithya Raman, herself a DSA member, is running for mayor.

The question Californians should ask is not whether every progressive candidate holds exactly the same positions. It is what kind of political culture we are normalizing.

Look at Michigan.

El-Sayed has campaigned alongside Hasan Piker, a Marxist provocateur who said America deserved 9/11 and whose anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitic statements should disqualify him from the company of any candidate running for office. Yet rather than distance himself from Piker’s rhetoric, El-Sayed and other DSA candidates have chosen to share a political stage with him.

LA Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman speaks at a press conference on Friday, July 24, 2026, in Los Angeles, California. (Jonathan Alcorn) for CA Post

During a leaked donor call, El-Sayed talked about using political victory to push Democrats further left, saying, “Ideally, you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message.”

He was referring to Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who is not a Republican adversary. He is a fellow Democrat whose great ideological offense appears to be refusing to abandon his outspoken support for Israel.

When members of a political party are targeted for defeat because they refuse to adopt an anti-Israel litmus test, Americans should pay attention. That is no longer simply a debate over foreign policy. It is an effort to punish dissent and enforce ideological conformity within one of America’s two major parties.

We live in a country already traumatized by political violence. Our leaders should be lowering the temperature, not invoking images of political opponents on pikes.

The contradictions become even harder to ignore.

El-Sayed’s campaign attacked primary opponent Haley Stevens for voting for a congressional resolution honoring Charlie Kirk following his assassination.

Yet when Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, leaked campaign audio reportedly captured El-Sayed cautioning his staff against commenting because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad.” He then discussed pivoting the conversation toward Israel and AIPAC.

As an Iranian-American Jew, that stopped me cold.

My family knows what Khamenei’s regime represented.

El-Sayed’s campaign attacked primary opponent Haley Stevens for voting for a congressional resolution honoring Charlie Kirk following his assassination. REUTERS

Iranian women were imprisoned for demanding basic freedom. Dissidents were crushed. Protesters were killed. Jews and other minorities lived under repression. Families like mine fled Iran because religious extremism transformed the country we loved.

So when an American politician appears more comfortable attacking a fellow Democrat for honoring an assassinated American political figure than speaking plainly about the death of the leader of the largest state sponsor of terrorism, I believe Americans are entitled to ask where our politics are heading.

This isn’t about demanding unquestioning support for Israel.

Criticize Netanyahu. Debate Gaza. Question American military aid. That is democracy.

But something different is happening when Israel becomes an ideological litmus test and when politicians thousands of miles from the Middle East seem more animated by Israel than by the everyday problems their constituents elected them to solve.

As a mother, that is what concerns me most.

Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Abdul El-Sayed speaks at a General Election Kickoff Rally for Michigan Democrats at Renaissance High School on Friday, August 7, 2026, in Detroit. (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) AP Photo/Paul Sancya

I talk to California parents worried about whether their children can afford to live here. Whether their schools are preparing them for the future. Whether their neighborhoods are safe. Whether their children will ever be able to buy a home in the state where they grew up.

Those are not left-wing concerns or right-wing concerns.

They are California concerns. They are American concerns.

And they are what our elected leaders should wake up thinking about every morning.

Voters deserve leaders whose campaigns are built around improving their lives.

Michigan just showed us where this movement can lead politically.

California should pay attention before November.

Shirin Yadegar is the founder of LA Mom Magazine and a political commentator.