Gavin Newsom’s rush to embrace Abdul El-Sayed makes me sick to my stomach

When the dust settled Wednesday morning, Abdul El-Sayed had narrowly won Michigan’s Democratic nomination for the United States Senate.

Gavin Newsom did not need much time to think about it.

As soon as El-Sayed was declared the winner, Newsom endorsed him. And now, just days later, California’s governor is preparing to head to Michigan for a multiday campaign swing supporting the Democratic ticket.

The trip reportedly was planned before the primary. Fair enough. But Newsom embraced El-Sayed without a word of qualification and with no apparent concern about the radical position his party’s newest Senate nominee has taken toward Jews and toward Israel.

El-Sayed has repeatedly refused to affirm that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state.

Asked directly whether Israel has a right to exist, El-Sayed would not say yes. Instead, he dismissed the question as a “gotcha game.” He has also said that every definition of a Jewish state involves some form of “illiberal values.”

He calls Israel’s conduct in Gaza “genocide” and “apartheid.” He has put the Israeli government on the same moral plane as Hamas and wants American military assistance to Israel ended, including purely defensive weapons like Iron Dome, which protects civilians from terror.

People can criticize Benjamin Netanyahu. They can condemn civilian deaths, object to particular military decisions, support humanitarian assistance for Palestinians, and argue for two states. Israelis have these arguments among themselves every day.

El-Sayed says Jews and Palestinians deserve equal rights and dignity. Of course they do. But Palestinian rights should not require the Jewish people to give up their own country. Israel’s failures no more erase its legitimacy than America’s failures erase ours.

El-Sayed’s position is not just opposition to this Israeli government. It is opposition to Israel remaining a Jewish state.

When anyone — let alone a serious candidate for the United States Senate — refuses to affirm that right, it lands as a gut punch to this American Jew.

Jews built extraordinary lives and flourishing communities throughout the Diaspora. Sometimes we prospered. Sometimes we were welcomed. But our security was always conditional.

Spain’s great Jewish civilization ended in forced conversions, the Inquisition and expulsion. Across Europe came ghettos, pogroms and recurring persecution. Then the Holocaust brought the systematic murder of six million Jews.

Those are only some of the darkest chapters in a long history. Jews learned, again and again, that acceptance could vanish and protection could be withdrawn.

That is why Israel matters. It is the one place where Jewish survival does not ultimately rest on somebody else deciding to protect us.

Newsom says he supports Israel. He traveled there after the October 7 terrorist attacks, met with survivors and victims’ families, and has spoken about antisemitism and protecting Jewish communities.

It was not a ceremonial visit. Newsom went less than two weeks after Hamas terrorists slaughtered roughly 1,200 people and took hundreds more hostage. He saw what happens when people committed to destroying Israel breach its defenses. He returned talking about Israel’s security and the trauma inflicted on Jews.

Yet none of that caused Newsom even a moment’s hesitation before he endorsed El-Sayed.

Party loyalty cannot make every position acceptable. If Newsom’s support for a Jewish state is a conviction rather than another prepared talking point, someone who rejects it should not receive his automatic endorsement.

Newsom stayed out of a very close primary. But once El-Sayed won, Newsom did not merely accept the result. He immediately climbed aboard without saying a word about a position he supposedly considers fundamental.

Israel is not their only disagreement. El-Sayed supports abolishing ICE, Medicare for All, and a billionaire wealth tax — all positions Newsom avoids while selling himself nationally as a more practical Democrat.

Apparently Newsom’s moderation applies to his branding, not his political alliances.

I have traveled to Israel. I have prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Standing there, I was struck by two things.

The first was just how small Israel is, especially when surrounded by nations and movements that have been openly hostile to its existence.

The second was the security I felt knowing that, in this one place, Jews have the sovereign power to defend themselves instead of depending entirely on others to do it.

So when Gavin Newsom and other Democrats rush to campaign for Abdul El-Sayed, I do not feel ordinary political anger.

It makes me sick to my stomach.

Not because Newsom agrees with El-Sayed. He says he does not. But because Newsom has decided that refusing to recognize the Jewish people’s right to a state of their own is not disqualifying.

Not even close.

For Newsom, apparently, there is no line he will not cross if the other side of it leads closer to the White House.

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.

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