BY ELIANA JONSHON SEP 22 2026 ------------------------ Abdul El-Sayed has attempted to address concerns from Jewish voters with ads and videos touting “Jews for Abdul,” or simply by flashing images of “Jewish” (emphasis on the “ish”) supporters wearing yarmulkes in his political ads. We wanted to know who these Jews were. Well, they are left-wing “social justice” activists with ties to an anti-Israel group that excused Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack, arguing it was a result of “Israeli apartheid and occupation,” the Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson reports. A Sept. 8 El-Sayed ad features former Detroit Jews for Justice “Culture and Technology Fellow” Daniel Klein, a former New York-based reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency who covered the role of “left-wing Jewish activists” in the Occupy Wall Street protests. After leaving journalism to become a “community organizer” in 2012, Klein joined Detroit Jews for Justice—a self-described “social justice organization”—in November 2018. Months earlier, he was arrested at the Michigan Poor People’s Campaign, a series of rallies against “violence, racism, environmental devastation and poverty.” Shortly before Yom Kippur, on Sept. 19, El-Sayed released a Rosh Hashanah video filmed at the home of mother-daughter duo Missy and Elaine Shifman. The Shifmans are a “family of liberal Jewish activists,” according to a 2021 profile of Missy’s sister Pamela, who leads the shadowy left-wing group Democracy Alliance. Missy and Elaine Shifman appear to be members of the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace, which has long demonized the Jewish state, most notably in the wake of Oct. 7, when it released a statement hours after the attack that referred to Hamas terrorists as “Palestinian fighters from Gaza,” accused Israel of “threatening to commit war crimes against besieged Palestinians,” and said the “source of all this violence” was “Israeli apartheid and occupation—and United States complicity in that oppression.” The Shifmans filmed a July 29 video for JVP expressing their support for El-Sayed. While it’s unclear whether Klein is a JVP member, the group also has close connections to Detroit Jews for Justice. “The liberal activist backgrounds of El-Sayed’s on-camera Jewish supporters suggests the Democrat’s push to win over Jewish voters—one that has generated national headlines like the New York Times’s ‘Jewish Leaders in Michigan Urge Support for El-Sayed’s Senate Bid’—is limited to the sort of anti-Israel partisans to whom El-Sayed already appeals,” Anderson writes. “‘Jews for Abdul’ was launched ahead of El-Sayed’s August primary against Stevens by Barbara Weinberg Barefield, a founding member of Detroit’s JVP chapter, which hosted a rally accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ and demanding a ceasefire in Gaza nine days after October 7.” READ MORE: Meet the ‘Jews for Abdul’: El-Sayed Ads Feature ‘Social Justice’ Activists Tied to Group That Excused Oct 7 ----------------------------------- https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MHOF!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F48e70fc2-9dc5-4b24-97fc-1ffe210d391a_1536x1078.jpeg Kris Mayes (Mario Tama/Getty Images) As she opposed a border security measure backed by more than 60 percent of the state’s voters, Arizona’s Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes privately coordinated with a far-left group that has called to abolish ICE and defund police, records obtained by the Free Beacon show. The group in question, LUCHA, emailed Mayes’s office in May 2024 to ask if Mayes would “come out with a statement” opposing the Secure the Border Act, a GOP-led bill that requires immigration status verification for certain public benefits and allows state and local law enforcement to arrest immigrants suspected of entering Arizona illegally. Mayes did just that three days later, releasing a statement that called the bill “a political distraction that will sow seeds of bias and fear without fixing the issues it claims to address.” LUCHA and Mayes’s office stayed in contact as the measure advanced through the legislative process. The group reached out to Mayes’s communications director in June 2024 to request a call on “how AG Mayes is thinking about” the bill, “especially from a prosecutorial perspective.” The Mayes staffer agreed to schedule the call, records show. Three months later, in September 2024, LUCHA reached out again to request that Mayes sign on to “a Democratic AG letter circulating” that criticized Texas’s immigration policies. Mayes’s team followed up to confirm that Mayes “signed onto this letter.” Arizona Republicans eventually passed the Secure the Border Act as a legislatively referred statute, a type of measure that is sent to voters as a statewide ballot measure rather than to the governor for a signature or veto. It passed with roughly 62 percent of the vote in November 2024. The communications indicate that Mayes’s office maintained a tight relationship with a far-left group that has called to abolish both ICE and Customs and Border Protection and to defund the police. That relationship contradicts Mayes’s public rhetoric as she runs for reelection in a tight race against Republican opponent Warren Petersen. Mayes is campaigning as “a partner to law enforcement” who “has locked up drug cartel members” and “seized more than 27 million deadly fentanyl pills off our streets.” READ MORE: Arizona AG Coordinated With Far-Left ‘Abolish ICE’ and ‘Defund Police’ Group While Opposing Border Security Measure, Records Show Additional reading: A “surprisingly large number of former aides, surrogates and donors” to Kamala Harris told Axios that they don’t think Harris will run for president in 2028, which could explain Gavin Newsom’s bizarre pledge not to run for the White House if Harris does. Jeff Bezos, call your office: A Washington Post piece on the how “anti-Muslim rhetoric is influencing the pivotal Michigan Senate race” laments that Republicans often “juxtapose” Abdul El-Sayed “with references to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, terrorism and Islamist extremism.” It’s almost like El-Sayed excused a Hezbollah-inspired terror attack on a Michigan synagogue and tapped a radical streamer who said “America deserved 9/11” as his top campaign surrogate. Shame on Republicans for noticing. Democratic congressman Jared Golden of Maine is out with an op-ed endorsing his Republican colleague Mike Lawler of New York, one of the top targets for the Democratic Party as it looks to regain control of the House. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries responded with a statement calling Lawler “a partisan hack and Trump sycophant” and dismissing Golden as “a retiring Congressmember who represents an out of town district more than 400 miles away.” A socialist city councilwoman running for mayor in Denver is sponsoring a measure that would restrict the city’s collection of its residents’ “actual or perceived sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression data,” a move she says is necessary to prevent the “targeting” of “trans folks.” If that doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry: One resident who testified on the bill during a recent hearing called it “the most ridiculous thing I think I’ve ever seen this council bring forward.” Check out our full Tuesday lineup below. Meet the ‘Jews for Abdul’: El-Sayed Ads Feature ‘Social Justice’ Activists Tied to Group That Excused Oct 7 Arizona AG Coordinated With Far-Left ‘Abolish ICE’ and ‘Defund Police’ Group While Opposing Border Security Measure, Records Show Socialist Denver Mayoral Candidate Sponsors Bill Restricting City’s Collection of ‘Gender Expression Data’ Denver Photojournalist Tied to Socialist Congresswoman-To-Be Arrested for Kicking Down Counterprotester During Chaotic Anti-ICE Rally Bloomberg-Backed Climate Group Paying Salaries of Democratic State AG Officials Quietly Shuts Down Amid Congressional, Legal Scrutiny Is U.S. Christianity Headed Toward Minority Status? Thanks for reading the Washington Free Beacon! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.