Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed pressed on 'The View' over slow apology for synagogue attack comment

Abdul El-Sayed, the newly elected senator from Michigan in the United States, faced questioning on the television programme 'The View' over his response to the attack on the Temple Israel synagogue in the state and his delay in apologising for his comment. Co-host Sara Haines asked him why he was so slow to apologise for his past comment about the attack.

On March 12, a man drove a truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township and exchanged gunfire with security personnel before killing himself, according to authorities. El-Sayed condemned the attack, but subsequently said 'Hurt people, hurt people', referring to the attacker's relatives who had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. He drew criticism for that comment.

Haines said El-Sayed's 'Hurt people, hurt people' response after the Temple Israel attack in March had really stuck with a lot of people. She said he did apologise, but it took him a while — about five months — to seemingly understand why it landed wrong with people, voters and constituents. Haines also asked whether leaders have a responsibility to challenge extremist views in their own religion, especially considering, as she put it, that he is the first Muslim senator of the United States.

In reply, El-Sayed said he really appreciated the question and agreed entirely that everyone wants to live in a world where faith is used to uplift all people rather than to justify the worst human actions. He recalled having visited the temple after the attack and having been there for a bar-mitzvah in his youth. He said he condemned the attack immediately and wanted to offer context, but when people are hurting, context is secondary, and he should have just stood with their pain. He said he learned from the experience and is not above apologising when he makes a mistake.

El-Sayed also said he had tried to offer context around the fact that the individual had lost a child, a niece and a nephew in an airstrike. He said leaders should demonstrate their ability to stand with people's pain with no exceptions and no asterisks, and that there also needs to be an adult conversation about the ways in which actions ricochet around the world and create worse for everyone.

Haines said she respected that, but was surprised it took him a while to understand that part of it, noting that the attack targeted a place where young kids were present. Co-host Joy Behar said at that point: 'Better late than never.'

Jesse Arm, a vice president at the Manhattan Institute and a pollster originally from Michigan, told Fox News Digital that if an American politician had responded the same way to Dylann Roof's massacre of Black worshippers at a Bible study, that politician would rightly have been run out of American public life. He asked why the standard should be any different when the targets are Jewish children and the attacker is an Islamist. Arm said El-Sayed's comments were grotesque and that the interview compounds the problem, because he is still presenting his mistake as a matter of timing. Arm wrote that whatever someone has suffered, there is no justification for attacking a synagogue full of children: 'None.'