Condemned
“He agonized over whether to condemn an Islamist attack on a Michigan synagogue in which Jewish children were targets.”
Rothman characterized El-Sayed as hesitating over an unqualified condemnation of the Temple Israel attack.
- Speaker
- Noah Rothman
- Capacity
- Senior writer at National Review
- Observed
- September 5, 2026
- Published here
- September 5, 2026
- Targets
- Abdul El-Sayed
- Classification rationale
- The authored article treats El-Sayed's contextualization as a failure to distinguish terrorism from Israeli military action.
Surrounding material
Full context
Before the quotation
Rothman assessed the political and ideological stakes of the Michigan Senate race after El-Sayed won the Democratic primary.
After the quotation
He contrasted the Temple Israel attack with Israel's actions against Hamas and Hezbollah and continued a broader critique of El-Sayed's candidacy.
Evidence
Complete source record
Michigan Is Everything for the GOP (opens in a new tab)
Rothman's authored analysis directly characterizes El-Sayed's response to the Temple Israel attack.