EL-SAYED FACES CAMPAIGN CRISIS AFTER SHOCK VIDEO ERUPTS ONLINE

El-Sayed Faces Backlash Over Half-Sister’s ‘October 7th Blessing’—But the Fight Is Over What Her Words Say About Him

Abdul El-Sayed had barely emerged from a bruising Democratic Senate primary in Michigan when another controversy arrived.

This one was not based on something the candidate himself had said.

It involved his half-sister.

A video recorded on October 7, 2024, showing University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi delivering what Rabbis4Ceasefire called an “October 7th blessing” has resurfaced as El-Sayed prepares for a closely watched general-election fight against Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers.

The timing makes the video politically potent.

El-Sayed narrowly won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary on August 4 and will face Rogers in November in a contest that could help determine control of the Senate. Israel and Gaza were already major dividing lines during the Democratic primary, and Republicans began portraying El-Sayed as politically extreme almost immediately after his victory.

But the controversy also raises a more basic question.

How much should a candidate be held responsible for the political statements of a member of his family?

That distinction matters because the video is Abdelhadi’s.

El-Sayed does not appear in it.

And when his campaign was asked about the recording, a spokeswoman explicitly distanced him from some of his half-sister’s views.

“Abdul loves his sister and also disagrees with her on a number of political positions and the rhetoric she’s chosen to use, including on foreign policy,” the campaign told Fox News Digital.

The campaign argued that El-Sayed—not Abdelhadi—is the person on Michigan’s ballot and that voters should evaluate his record and platform.

That does not make the video politically irrelevant.

But it does make the context important.

The recording was published on October 7, 2024, exactly one year after the Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed approximately 1,200 people and triggered the war in Gaza.

Abdelhadi opened her remarks by saying, “Allahu Akbar.”

She then explained the phrase, commonly translated as “God is greater,” through the lens of her Muslim faith.

She said she had thought frequently about it over the previous year because it reminded her that brutality and oppression could not eliminate what she described as the eventual “horizon of justice.”

The phrase itself is an ordinary religious expression in Islam.

The political controversy comes from the date, the framing of the video and the substance of the remarks surrounding it—not simply from Abdelhadi saying “Allahu Akbar.”

Abdelhadi did not specifically discuss the Israelis murdered during the October 7 attack in the recorded remarks published with the post.

Instead, she focused on Palestinian suffering, faith, oppression and her belief that something existed beyond even the power of the strongest military forces.

She also urged listeners not to accept narratives imposed by what she called “colonial powers.”

“There is something greater than even the strongest armies and for me that’s God,” she said.

Abdelhadi ended by telling listeners that considerable work remained ahead and that people needed one another to build a better future.

“I’ll see you on the streets,” she concluded.

Those remarks have now been interpreted in sharply different ways.

Critics of El-Sayed have portrayed the video as a celebration or glorification of October 7.

That characterization has circulated among conservative commentators and groups supporting Rogers.

But that is not how Abdelhadi describes what happened.

The original collaborative Instagram post involving Abdelhadi and Rabbis4Ceasefire labeled her contribution an “October 7th blessing.”

After the recording resurfaced, Abdelhadi added context saying Rabbis4Ceasefire had organized and named the gathering and that it was intended as a moment of grief for people who died between October 7, 2023, and October 7, 2024.

She said organizers invited her to participate and that the recorded remarks were her contribution to that gathering.

That creates an important factual boundary.

The video can fairly be described as politically charged.

It was released on the anniversary of a terrorist attack, it did not specifically acknowledge the Israeli victims of that attack, and Abdelhadi used the occasion to discuss Palestinian oppression and justice.

But saying that the recording was definitively a “celebration of October 7” goes beyond what can be established simply from the video and its stated context.

That is an interpretation advanced by critics.

Abdelhadi says it was part of a mourning event.

Those two descriptions are now part of the political fight surrounding the recording.

The more complicated issue for El-Sayed is that the controversy does not exist in isolation.

His own positions on Israel and Gaza have already become one of the defining elements of his Senate campaign.

El-Sayed has called for an end to unconditional U.S. military assistance to Israel.

That position was a major dividing line in the Democratic primary, where pro-Israel groups spent heavily against him and Michigan’s large Arab American population became an important part of the political landscape surrounding the race.

He has also used unusually blunt language about both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Asked in April whether he believed the Israeli government was as evil as Hamas, El-Sayed responded:

“Hamas — evil. Israeli government — evil. We can say both.”

He linked his criticism of the Israeli government to the large number of Palestinian deaths during the war and has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing war crimes.

Those are El-Sayed’s own statements.

They therefore provide a much stronger basis for evaluating his foreign-policy views than his half-sister’s activism does.

His October 2025 fundraising message also generated criticism.

The message was sent on the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks and focused heavily on Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza.

Critics, including Michigan Democrats supportive of Israel, objected that it did not directly address the Hamas-led killings that began the war.

That history is why the resurfaced Abdelhadi video has gained traction.

Republican opponents do not have to introduce Israel as a new issue in the campaign.

It is already there.

What the video gives them is another way to connect El-Sayed politically to the most confrontational elements of pro-Palestinian activism.

His campaign is trying to prevent that connection from becoming an assumption.

The spokeswoman’s response draws a straightforward line: El-Sayed loves his half-sister, but he does not agree with all of her politics or rhetoric.

That defense also reflects a broader principle that can become blurred during campaigns.

Family relationships are not political endorsements.

Candidates can share relatives without sharing their beliefs.

If El-Sayed had endorsed Abdelhadi’s October 7 remarks, repeated them or incorporated them into his campaign, that would create a direct political connection.

No such endorsement is established by the resurfaced video itself.

At the same time, El-Sayed cannot completely separate the controversy from his own record because his views on Israel are already unusually prominent in the campaign.

The relevant question therefore becomes narrower.

Not whether El-Sayed is responsible for everything his half-sister says.

He is not.

The more relevant question for voters is how his own positions compare with the political themes that have now made her video controversial.

That distinction also applies to Abdelhadi’s separate history of activism.

The University of Chicago identifies Eman Abdelhadi as a faculty member in its Department of Comparative Human Development, with research interests including religion, gender, identity and demography.

She was arrested during an October 2025 protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois.

Authorities charged her with two felony counts of aggravated battery involving a government employee and two misdemeanor counts of resisting or obstructing a peace officer.

Prosecutors alleged that she spat at an Illinois State Police trooper.

Those are criminal allegations.

An arrest or criminal charge does not establish guilt, and the available information about that incident should not be described as though a conviction has already resolved the allegations.

The episode nevertheless contributes to Abdelhadi’s public identity as an activist and helps explain why political opponents are scrutinizing her past statements now that her half-brother is a major-party Senate nominee.

But again, the political connection has limits.

Abdelhadi is not running for the Senate.

El-Sayed is.

And El-Sayed now has his own general-election record to defend.

After defeating Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary, he moved quickly to reassure constituencies that had been skeptical of him.

That included Jewish voters.

Reuters reported that El-Sayed referred to Jewish Michiganders as his “sisters and brothers” after his primary victory and said he was committed to their safety.

That outreach reflects the challenge ahead.

El-Sayed won the primary without receiving 50 percent of the vote and now has to expand his coalition beyond the progressive voters who helped carry him through the nomination contest.

Michigan is not a safely Democratic state.

Donald Trump carried it in 2024, and Democrats view the Senate seat as essentially one they must hold if they hope to regain control of the chamber.

Rogers and Republican groups therefore have a strong incentive to define El-Sayed before he can define himself for general-election voters.

The Abdelhadi video fits easily into that strategy.

It combines several of the most politically combustible subjects in the race: October 7, Israel, Gaza, religion, Palestinian activism and accusations of extremism.

For El-Sayed, the challenge is to prevent those subjects from collapsing into one another.

Criticism of the Israeli government is not automatically support for Hamas.

A Muslim religious phrase is not by itself evidence of extremism.

A relative’s activism is not automatically a candidate’s platform.

And describing Abdelhadi’s video as a celebration of the October 7 killings requires an interpretive step that her own account disputes.

None of those distinctions requires voters to agree with Abdelhadi.

Nor does it shield El-Sayed from scrutiny over his own statements.

In fact, his own comments provide ample material for a substantive debate.

He wants to end unconditional military assistance to Israel.

He has called Hamas evil.

He has also called the Israeli government evil.

And he has faced criticism over how he has discussed October 7 and the war that followed.

Those positions belong to him.

His half-sister’s statements do not automatically become his.

That is the tension underneath the latest controversy.

Republicans are trying to use Abdelhadi’s video as evidence of a broader political worldview surrounding El-Sayed.

His campaign is arguing that voters should judge the nominee by what he himself believes, says and proposes.

Both sides understand why the distinction matters.

Michigan’s Senate race is expected to be one of the contests with consequences for control of the chamber, and Israel was already one of the most divisive issues in the primary.

The resurfaced video ensures that debate will continue into the general election.

But the strongest case for or against Abdul El-Sayed will ultimately have to rest on Abdul El-Sayed.