U.S. media reports over the weekend resurfaced inflammatory videos and social media posts by Eman Abdelhadi, the half-sister of Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democrat who this month won his party’s nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan.
Among them was a video Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago professor and activist, posted on Instagram on October 7, 2024, exactly one year after Hamas terrorists killed some 1,200 people in Israel. According to the reports, she titled the video “A blessing for October 7” and appeared wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh.
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Eman Abdelhadi and her brother, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed
(Photo: Robin Buckson/Pool via REUTERS)
“I want to say Allahu Akbar,” Abdelhadi said, explaining that the phrase means “God is greater.” She described it as an important expression in the Muslim tradition and said she had thought about it often over the preceding year because it reminded her that no matter how powerful cruelty, oppression and the forces confronting people might seem, justice remained possible.
She went on to say that for her, God represented a force greater than even the strongest armies and that reflecting on that belief reaffirmed her commitment to justice and to resisting narratives imposed by colonial powers.
The resurfaced video comes as El-Sayed, an outspoken critic of Israel, seeks to present himself as a principled advocate for peace ahead of his November contest against Republican Mike Rogers. The attention surrounding the anniversary video also revived a post Abdelhadi published on October 7, 2023, as the Hamas attack was unfolding.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the most prominent figures on the American progressive left, had condemned the attack as “horrifying,” saying there was no justification for such violence and warning that innocent people on both sides would suffer.
Abdelhadi responded directly. “What a disappointment,” she wrote. “If you can’t stand with a ppl that have been held in an open prison for 16 years finally fighting their oppressors, how can you claim to stand for justice?"
The New York Post also resurfaced earlier posts in which Abdelhadi attacked traditional American holidays.
In a July 2016 post about Independence Day, she wrote that she would not celebrate what she described as the transfer of stolen land from one colonial power to another.
Her criticism continued on Thanksgiving in November 2024. “If it weren’t attached to genocide, thanksgiving would be a lovely holiday,” she wrote, before describing the appeal of gathering to express gratitude and share a meal. She then added: “We can’t have nice things under settler colonialism. May all the empires fall.”
El-Sayed’s own past posts resurface
The controversy surrounding Abdelhadi comes after previous scrutiny of El-Sayed’s own statements about American history.
In a Thanksgiving post from November 2019 that has since been deleted, El-Sayed wrote that the United States had been built on the systematic destruction of Indigenous peoples and argued that their descendants continued to suffer disproportionate homelessness, unemployment and mortality. He concluded that Americans owed Indigenous communities more than expressions of gratitude and called for reparations.
Abdelhadi
El-Sayed represents the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and has been an outspoken critic of Israel. He has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza and argued for ending U.S. military aid to the country. Reporting on his campaign has also highlighted his appearances with streamer Hasan Piker, who previously said that “America deserved 9/11.” El-Sayed has called that remark “stupid” while resisting demands to disassociate himself from Piker.
Fox News also reported that on the second anniversary of the October 7 attack, El-Sayed sent supporters an email seeking donations for Palestinians and compared Hamas and the Israeli government while calling both “evil.”
El-Sayed’s campaign sought to distance the candidate from his half-sister’s rhetoric. “Abdul loves his sister and also disagrees with her on a number of political positions and the rhetoric she’s chosen to use,” campaign spokesperson Sophie Pollock said, including disagreements over foreign policy.
The campaign stressed that El-Sayed, rather than Abdelhadi, is the candidate and said Michigan voters should judge his public-service record and political platform, adding that his campaign has consistently been rooted "in his love for America and Michigan".
Abdul El-Sayed
(Photo: SCOTT OLSON / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP)
Abdelhadi has also previously faced legal trouble connected to her political activism.
In October 2025, she was arrested following a protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in suburban Chicago after allegedly spitting on an Illinois state trooper. She faced aggravated battery and obstruction charges. She has also said that the University of Notre Dame canceled her participation in a conference because of her political positions.
Michigan is not New York
El-Sayed won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary earlier this month, narrowly defeating Rep. Haley Stevens, a more moderate and pro-Israel Democrat.
Although technically a state race, the contest was widely viewed as a test of the Democratic Party’s ideological direction ahead of the November midterms. El-Sayed’s victory followed a series of successes by progressive candidates challenging the party establishment and adopting increasingly forceful positions against Israel.
(Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook)
Israel became one of the central dividing lines in the Michigan primary.
AIPAC-backed groups poured unprecedented sums into efforts to help Stevens defeat El-Sayed, while El-Sayed repeatedly attacked the influence of pro-Israel money in the race. Reporting during the campaign put outside pro-Stevens spending at tens of millions of dollars, dwarfing El-Sayed’s own campaign spending.
Moderate Democratic leaders also rallied around Stevens, in part because they believed she would be better positioned to defeat Republican Mike Rogers in November. It was not enough. El-Sayed’s victory now gives progressives an opportunity to demonstrate that their movement can win not only in heavily Democratic territory but in a crucial battleground such as Michigan.
And that makes the resurfaced statements from his half-sister politically more than a family embarrassment. With a competitive general election ahead, Republicans will almost certainly seek to use them as another test of how far the Democratic Party’s progressive wing has moved, particularly on Israel and the Middle East.