{"id":2699730,"date":"2026-11-06T00:31:01","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T05:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/michigans-common-sense-rebuke-of-middle-east-warmonger\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T00:35:41","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T05:35:41","slug":"michigans-common-sense-rebuke-of-middle-east-warmonger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/michigans-common-sense-rebuke-of-middle-east-warmonger\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan\u2019s Common-Sense Rebuke of Middle East Warmongers"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmichigans-common-sense-rebuke-of-middle-east-warmonger%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2699730&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>I\u2019m relieved Democrats did well, especially Abdul El\u2011Sayed\u2019s upset in Michigan. Though I oppose many of his leftist positions, he courageously centered opposition too war with Iran and prioritized spending at home over bombing abroad. despite heavy AIPAC spending and accusations of anti\u2011Israel bias, many Jewish voters backed him. The piece critiques broad claims of pervasive antisemitism, condemns Israel\u2019s devastating Gaza and Lebanon campaigns, and warns the U.S. risks perpetual wars tied to Israeli aims. El\u2011Sayed\u2019s win,the author argues,advances common sense over fear.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"c-blog-post__content s-wysiwyg s-wysiwyg--blog\">\n<div style=\"margin-bottom:30px;\" id=\"elevenlabs-audionative-widget\" data-height=\"90\" data-width=\"100%\" data-frameborder=\"no\" data-scrolling=\"no\" data-publicuserid=\"cb0d9922301244fcc1aeafd0610a8e90a36a320754121ee126557a7416405662\" data-playerurl=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/player\/index.html\" >Loading the <a href=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/text-to-speech\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Elevenlabs Text to Speech<\/a> AudioNative Player&#8230;<\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/player\/audioNativeHelper.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script>                            <\/p>\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m glad the Democrats won big. Since February 28th, I\u2019ve hoped Trump would receive a humiliating rebuke; his launch of a needless war far outweighs his other failings and accomplishments. I am especially pleased Abdul El-Sayed won by a convincing margin in Michigan. Not that I harbor any hope that he will become, by my lights, an appealing senator; he espouses leftist views on issues, from transing kids to socialized medicine, that I find wrongheaded or repellant. (I also believe mass Muslim immigration has been an unmitigated disaster for Western Europe, and would support a dramatic curtailment of Muslim immigration here\u2014positions I\u2019m sure El Sayed doesn\u2019t share.) But the newly elected senator has the right enemies on even more important issues, and prevailed against them against heavy odds. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I spent the morning of election day immersed in the discourse of Jewish lamentation. It began with the veteran journalist Joe Klein <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/the-democratic-tent-is-too-big-michigan-midterms\">arguing<\/a> that El Sayed doesn\u2019t belong inside the Democratic tent, and led (because Klein opens with it) to historian Simon Schama\u2019s long and eloquent <a href=\"https:\/\/jewishquarterly.com\/essay\/2026\/10\/jew-hatred\">essay<\/a> about antisemitism in the West, which he paints as a more or less unbroken thread running from John Chrysostom to the anti-Israel protestors on American campuses. Schama believes that antisemitism is absolutely central to the West, a functionally constitutive element in the development of Christianity, the Enlightenment, and modern nationalism. That is quite a claim, and probably at odds with an argument now increasingly floated by Israel\u2019s ardent backers\u2014that ours is a Judeo-Christian civilization whose destiny and duty it is to fight Islam, implicitly under Israel\u2019s leadership. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These civilizational questions won\u2019t be settled here; I note them because Klein made them the backdrop to his argument that El-Sayed must be rejected because he is \u201ca free range anti-Israel bigot.\u201d I don\u2019t know Klein now, but remember pleasant conversations with him a generation or more ago, from a time when I and my colleagues at the <em>New York Post<\/em> editorial page used to read his <em>New York Magazine<\/em> column religiously\u2014it seemed a rare glimmer of sanity from the Manhattan liberal media establishment. Were I to see him again, I would want to somehow reassure him about the extent of antisemitic bigotry he and Schama purport to find so pervasive and menacing. <\/p>\n<p>                         <!-- \/22404337467,3946880\/theamericanconservative-Leaderboard-Top -->                         <\/p>\n<div id='div-gpt-ad-1742316429780-0' style='min-width: 300px; min-height: 50px; max-width: 100%; '>                         <\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the right, Schama dwells on Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes. I would agree they are despicable, and add that you will never find them taken seriously or respected by consequential people. On the left, around 60 percent of Michigan\u2019s Jews made their own judgement about Klein\u2019s charge of bigotry by voting for El-Sayed, despite being drenched in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/finding-fatherhood-resiliency-and-respect-teach-children-self-worth\/\" title=\"Resilience and respect foster self-worth in children, leading to fatherhood discovery.\">massive media campaign<\/a> to depict the Democratic candidate as a Muslim Brotherhood acolyte and violent jihad-sympathizer. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The reason to celebrate El-Sayed\u2019s victory is that, far more so than other Democrats, he put opposition to the Iran war front and center. He didn\u2019t merely complain about affordability under Trump; he made central to his campaign the costs of choosing to drop bombs on other people\u2019s children instead of spending our tax dollars here on Americans. AIPAC was against El-Sayed from the beginning, because of his opposition to Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, and spent an astonishing $31 million to defeat him in the primary. Then it doubled down in the general election, pouring in millions more. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like many, El Sayed calls the Israeli assault on Gaza a genocide. I demur, and believe the term should be reserved for the systematic and purposeful killing of civilians, as in the Holocaust; I spent a good part of the last three years arguing, often with family members, that what Israel did is probably no different from the United States would do in response to a similarly barbaric attack. My post\u2013October 7 reactions on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/threats-allegedly-made-to-boston-childrens-hospital-surrounding-youth-trans-treatment-sparks-department-of-justice-warning\/\" title=\"Threats Allegedly Made To Boston Children...s Hospital Surrounding Youth Trans Treatment Sparks Department Of Justice ...ning\">social media prompted<\/a> one very pro-Israel editor to ask me to write, which I did. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Israel did not, as I expected, confine its response to the military destruction of Hamas. It sought to render Gaza uninhabitable. And not just Gaza. Any aerial view of southern Lebanon shows a similar landscape of utter devastation. Tens of thousands of buildings reduced to rubble. Lebanon presumably deserved it because a few rockets were fired at Israel after Israel murdered Iran\u2019s leader, a spiritual leader of Shi\u2019ite Muslims, in a sneak attack. <\/p>\n<section class=\"c-subscribe-email\" >\n<div class=\"l-container\">\n<div class=\"c-subscribe-email__wrap\">\n<div class=\"c-subscribe-email__head\">\n<h4 class=\"c-subscribe-email__heading\">Subscribe Today<\/h4>\n<h5 class=\"c-subscribe-email__subheading\">Get daily emails in your inbox<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"c-subscribe-email__form-wrap\">      <!-- Begin Mailchimp Signup Form -->      <\/p>\n<div id=\"mc_embed_signup\">\n<form id=\"mc-embedded-subscribe-form\" class=\"validate\" action=\"https:\/\/theamericanconservative.us4.list-manage.com\/subscribe\/post?u=442e644c01f8e54e26e4ff3f8&#038;id=f7b67cac40\" method=\"post\" name=\"mc-embedded-subscribe-form\" novalidate target=\"_blank\">\n<div id=\"mc_embed_signup_scroll\">\n<div class=\"c-subscribe-email__fields\">              <label for=\"mce-EMAIL\" class=\"u-screenreader-text\">Email Address:<\/label>              <input id=\"mce-EMAIL\" class=\"c-subscribe-email__field\" name=\"EMAIL\" type=\"email\" value=\"\" placeholder=\"Your Email\" \/>              <input id=\"mc-embedded-subscribe\" class=\"c-subscribe-email__submit o-button o-button--red-500 o-button--solid\" name=\"subscribe\" type=\"submit\" value=\"Subscribe\" \/>            <\/div>\n<div id=\"mce-responses\" class=\"clear\">\n<div id=\"mce-error-response\" class=\"response\" style=\"display: none;\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"mce-success-response\" class=\"response\" style=\"display: none;\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>              <!-- real people should not fill this in and expect good things - do not remove this or risk form bot signups-->            <\/p>\n<div class=\"u-screenreader-text\" aria-hidden=\"true\">              <input tabindex=\"-1\" name=\"b_442e644c01f8e54e26e4ff3f8_f7b67cac40\" type=\"text\" value=\"\" \/>            <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/form>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>      <!--End mc_embed_signup-->          <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As Benjamin Netanyahu boasts, Israel has been trying to get America into a war with Iran for twenty years. He has had regular access to the halls of American power, receives (or used to) thunderous standing ovations by both parties when invited to address Congress. The donors allied with him have near constant access to the White House. An observer from a culturally distant land might regard the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, Speaker Mike Johnson and Netanyahu, the former Speaker John Boehner and Netanyahu, indeed Israel\u2019s leader and almost any Republican politician, and conclude that Jerusalem is plainly the metropole and the United States a colony expected to supply money and military resources. As Trump State Department spokeswoman (and former Fox News contributor) Tammy Bruce put it, \u201cthe United States is the greatest country on earth\u2026 next to Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The consequence of this attitude is not only the present use of American tax dollars to render the countries surrounding Israel uninhabitable. It is America fighting wars of indefinite duration for the foreseeable future. The top Republican donor Miriam Adelson\u2019s Israeli newspaper is already talking about a new Israeli war against Turkey. \u201cFinish the job,\u201d say the Iran hawks, not specifying whether they want Washington to send troops or commit massive war crimes with nuclear weapons. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Until this political moment, the idea that the United States should fight wars in perpetuity to ensure Israel\u2019s nuclear monopoly in the Mideast was hardly considered a fit subject of debate in Washington. One can\u2019t be certain of much about the new Senate, but one can be sure that these issues will be on the mind of Sen. Abdul El-Sayed. That is not a victory for bigotry, but for common sense.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m glad the Democrats did well. Since February 28, I\u2019ve hoped Trump would face a humiliating rebuke; his needless war dwarfs his other failings and achievements. I\u2019m especially pleased that Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan by a solid margin. Not that I think he\u2019ll be a likable senator by my standards; he argues left-leaning positions on issues like transgender rights for kids and universal healthcare, which I find misguided or off-putting. I also oppose mass Muslim immigration and would favor a sharp reduction here-positions I\u2019m certain El-Sayed does not share. Yet the newly elected senator has the right adversaries on more important matters and prevailed despite long odds.<\/p>\n<p>I spent election-day morning immersed in discussions of Jewish lament. It began with veteran journalist Joe Klein arguing that El-Sayed doesn\u2019t belong inside the Democratic tent, and it led (since Klein starts from that premise) to Simon Schama\u2019s long, eloquent essay about antisemitism in the West, which he casts as a nearly continuous thread from John Chrysostom to campus anti-Israel protests. Schama treats antisemitism as utterly central to the West, a constitutive element in Christianity, the Enlightenment, and modern nationalism. That\u2019s a bold claim, probably at odds with a line now popular among Israel\u2019s ardent backers-that ours is a Judeo-Christian civilization whose destiny is to confront Islam, with Israel at the helm. These civilizational questions won\u2019t be settled here, but I mention them because Klein used them as the backdrop to his argument that El-Sayed must be rejected as \u201ca free-range anti-Israel bigot.\u201d I don\u2019t know Klein well today, but I recall pleasant conversations from years past, when my colleagues at the New York Post editorial page read his New York Magazine column as a rare glimmer of sanity from the Manhattan liberal media establishment. If I saw him again, I\u2019d want to reassure him about the extent of antisemitic bigotry he and Schama claim to see as pervasive and menacing.<\/p>\n<p>On the right, Schama foregrounds Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes. I\u2019d agree they\u2019re despicable, and add that serious people will never take them seriously or treat them with respect. On the left, about 60 percent of Michigan\u2019s Jews formed their own judgment about Klein\u2019s charge of bigotry by voting for El-Sayed, despite a massive media campaign portraying him as a Muslim Brotherhood devotee and jihad sympathizer.<\/p>\n<p>The reason to celebrate El-Sayed\u2019s victory is that, more than other Democrats, he placed opposition to the Iran war at the center of his campaign. He didn\u2019t merely complain about affordability under Trump; he stressed the costs of bombing other people\u2019s children instead of spending our money here at home. AIPAC opposed El-Sayed from the start because of his opposition to Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, spending an astonishing $31 million to defeat him in the primary, then pouring in even more in the general election. Like many, El-Sayed calls the Israeli assault on Gaza genocide. I demur, believing the term should be reserved for the systematic and purposeful killing of civilians, as in the Holocaust; I spent much of the last few years arguing, often with family, that what Israel did may be no different from what the United States would do in response to a similarly barbaric attack. My post-October 7 reactions on social media drew one very pro-Israel editor to ask me to write, which I did.<\/p>\n<p>But Israel did not confine its response to military destruction of Hamas. It sought to render Gaza uninhabitable. And not just Gaza. An aerial view of southern Lebanon shows a similar landscape of utter devastation-tens of thousands of buildings reduced to rubble. Lebanon presumably deserved it because a few rockets were fired at Israel after Israel murdered Iran\u2019s leader, a spiritual figure for Shi\u2019ite Muslims, in a covert strike.<\/p>\n<p>As Benjamin Netanyahu boasts, Israel has been trying to get America into a war with Iran for twenty years. He has regular access to the halls of American power and receives standing ovations from both parties when invited to address Congress. The donors allied with him have near-constant access to the White House. To an observer from a culturally distant land, the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, Johnson and Netanyahu, Boehner and Netanyahu, or virtually any Republican politician and Israel might suggest that Jerusalem is the metropole and the United States a colony that must provide money and military resources. As Trump\u2019s State Department spokesperson (and former Fox News contributor) Tammy Bruce put it, \u201cthe United States is the greatest country on earth\u2026 next to Israel.\u201d The consequence of this stance isn\u2019t only the current use of American tax dollars to render neighboring countries uninhabitable; it\u2019s America fighting wars of indefinite duration for the foreseeable future. The top Republican donor Miriam Adelson\u2019s Israeli newspaper is already hinting at a new Israeli war against Turkey. \u201cFinish the job,\u201d the Iran hawks say, without specifying whether they want Washington to send troops or commit massive war crimes with nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p>Until now, the idea that the United States should fight perpetual wars to ensure Israel\u2019s nuclear monopoly in the Middle East wasn\u2019t widely debated in Washington. One can\u2019t be certain about much in the new Senate, but one can be sure these issues will be on Sen. Abdul El-Sayed\u2019s mind. That isn\u2019t a victory for bigotry but for common sense<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4483,"featured_media":2699731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/tac.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/GettyImages-2303432829.jpg?auto=compress&#038;crop=faces%2Centropy&#038;fit=crop&#038;fm=jpg&#038;h=630&#038;ixlib=php-3.3.1&#038;q=80&#038;w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[548],"tags":[87542,4601,70970],"class_list":["post-2699730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conservative-news-daily","tag-common-sense-2","tag-michigan","tag-middleeast"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/tac.imgix.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/GettyImages-2303432829.jpg?auto=compress&#038;crop=faces%2Centropy&#038;fit=crop&#038;fm=jpg&#038;h=630&#038;ixlib=php-3.3.1&#038;q=80&#038;w=1200","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4483"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2699730"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2699734,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699730\/revisions\/2699734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2699731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2699730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2699730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2699730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}