EL-SAYED NIGHTMARE – SHOCK VIDEO WILL DESTROY HIS CAMPAIGN
El-Sayed Campaign Distances Candidate From Half-Sister's Oct. 7 Remarks - But the Video's Context Matters
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is facing another politically sensitive controversy after a two-year-old video featuring his half-sister resurfaced in the middle of one of the country's most closely watched Senate races.
The video is real. So is the reaction from El-Sayed's campaign.
But the dispute turns on a narrower question than some of the viral commentary suggests: what Eman Abdelhadi actually said on October 7, 2024, what the gathering was intended to commemorate, and how much of a family member's political rhetoric can fairly be attributed to a candidate who was not in the video.
Abdelhadi, an assistant professor of comparative human development at the University of Chicago, appeared in a collaborative Instagram post published by her account and Rabbis4Ceasefire exactly one year after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
Rabbis4Ceasefire labeled the video an "October 7th blessing from Eman Abdelhadi, Scholar, Writer & Organizer."
Abdelhadi began with the Arabic phrase "Allahu Akbar," which she immediately translated and described as an important phrase in the Muslim tradition.
She said the phrase had been on her mind during the preceding year because, in her words, it reminded her that brutality and oppression were not greater than God and that justice remained possible.
She later spoke about faith, powerful armies, colonial narratives, justice and the work she believed activists still had ahead of them.
The short address ended with Abdelhadi saying, "I'll see you on the streets."
The date made the remarks politically combustible.
October 7, 2024, was the first anniversary of the Hamas-led assault in which roughly 1,200 people were killed in Israel and hundreds were taken hostage. The attack triggered the Gaza war and remains a deeply traumatic date for many Israelis and Jews around the world.
The video does not explicitly mention the Israelis killed or kidnapped in the October 7 attack. It also does not name Hamas.
That omission is one reason critics have interpreted the clip as insensitive or worse.
Some social-media users went further and described the video as a celebration of October 7.
The available footage does not establish that conclusion.
Nothing in the quoted remarks directly praises Hamas, endorses the attack or celebrates the killing of civilians. The phrase "Allahu Akbar" means "God is greater" or "God is greatest" and is used broadly in Muslim religious life; its presence by itself does not establish support for violence.
There is also additional context from the organizers and Abdelhadi herself.
The original post was made with Rabbis4Ceasefire, a group of Jewish clergy and activists advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza. After the video resurfaced, Abdelhadi wrote that Rabbis4Ceasefire had organized and named the gathering as "a moment of grief for lives lost between 10/7/23 and 10/7/2024."
She said she had been invited to participate and described the recorded blessing as her "offering" to that gathering.
That explanation does not erase the political significance of choosing October 7 for remarks that focused on oppression, colonial power and justice without specifically acknowledging the victims of the Hamas attack.
But it does complicate the claim that the event was organized as a celebration of the attack.
The distinction is important because El-Sayed's opponents are not running against Abdelhadi.
They are running against El-Sayed.
Fox News Digital asked his Senate campaign about the resurfaced video, and the campaign did not adopt or defend all of Abdelhadi's rhetoric.
A campaign spokeswoman said El-Sayed loves his sister but "disagrees with her on a number of political positions and the rhetoric she's chosen to use, including on foreign policy."
The spokeswoman added that El-Sayed is the person on the ballot and said voters should judge his public record and platform.
That is a predictable campaign response, but it also identifies the central fairness question.
Candidates can reasonably be questioned about their own statements, their advisers, their endorsements, the organizations they join and the people they choose to campaign with.
A relative's independent political speech is different unless there is evidence the candidate adopted it, coordinated it or made it part of the campaign.
The resurfaced video, by itself, does not show that.
That does not mean El-Sayed lacks his own record on Israel and Gaza.
He has made the issue a major part of his political identity and has called for ending unconditional U.S. military support for Israel.
During a CNN interview earlier this year, El-Sayed was asked whether he considered the Israeli government as evil as Hamas. He answered yes, saying both could be called evil because of the deaths for which he believes they are responsible.
That answer has drawn significant criticism from pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans, while El-Sayed's supporters argue that condemning both Hamas and Israeli government conduct is a consistent anti-war position.
There is also a separate episode from October 7, 2025, that is directly attributable to the candidate.
On the second anniversary of the Hamas attack, El-Sayed sent a fundraising email criticizing Israel's military campaign in Gaza without mentioning the original Hamas killings. The Washington Post later reported that his campaign called the omission a mistake.
That episode is more relevant to evaluating El-Sayed than his half-sister's video because it was a communication issued by his own campaign.
The same principle applies to his campaign appearances with controversial streamer Hasan Piker. El-Sayed chose to appear with Piker, and voters are free to judge that decision even though El-Sayed has said he does not endorse every statement Piker has made.
The controversy surrounding Abdelhadi has also expanded beyond the October 7 video because of her own activist record.
In October 2025, Abdelhadi was arrested during a protest outside an immigration enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois.
She was charged with two felony counts of aggravated battery to a government employee and two misdemeanor counts of resisting or obstructing a peace officer.
Court filings reported at the time alleged that she knowingly and intentionally spat at an Illinois State Police trooper.
Those charges are separate from the Senate campaign and remain allegations unless and until proven in court. The public sources reviewed for this article did not establish a conviction in that case.
The University of Chicago's current directory continues to list Abdelhadi as an assistant professor in its Department of Comparative Human Development.
Her activism and political views therefore provide context for why the resurfaced video attracted attention, but they do not convert her statements into El-Sayed's statements.
Republicans are nonetheless likely to keep the episode in circulation.
El-Sayed narrowly won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary and will face Republican Mike Rogers in November. The race is one of the contests most likely to influence control of the U.S. Senate.
Israel and Gaza were already central fault lines in the Democratic primary, and Republicans have signaled that they intend to make El-Sayed's foreign-policy views and political associations major issues in the general election.
That makes a family controversy especially easy to fold into a larger political narrative.
The strongest version of that narrative is also the easiest to overstate.
It is accurate to say El-Sayed's half-sister gave a speech labeled an "October 7th blessing" on the first anniversary of the Hamas attack and did not explicitly mention the Israeli victims in the remarks that circulated.
It is accurate to say the candidate's campaign publicly distanced him from some of her positions and rhetoric.
It is also accurate to say Abdelhadi later described the event as a gathering for grief over lives lost during the entire year of war, and the video itself contains no direct endorsement of Hamas or the October 7 killings.
Those facts can exist at the same time.
The larger political question is whether voters see the episode as relevant evidence about El-Sayed's judgment or as an attempt to hold a candidate responsible for the independent views of a family member.
For that question, the most reliable evidence remains El-Sayed's own record.
His positions on Israel, his campaign communications and the people he chooses to appear with are all fair subjects for scrutiny.
May you like
His half-sister's politics are hers.
The distinction may not end the controversy, but it is necessary if the argument is going to be about what can actually be proved rather than what a viral clip can be made to imply.
