Dr. Abdul El-Sayed

It's the reason why young people show up to our events because they understand that I'm not trying to talk down to anybody.

I'm not trying to talk in language that is not accessible to everybody.

I'm trying to talk about real problems that real people face in real places where people actually go.

After the terrible, horrific attack on Temple Israel, I was quite clear that anti-Semitism has no place in America, that we have a responsibility to stand up for Jewish people against anti-Semitism.

It's the reason why I have been clear from the get that we have to stand up for Jewish people and against anti-Semitism.

And that starts with recognizing that any attempt to tie something that's happening on the part of a foreign government abroad to people who

in Michigan as a function of their faith is wrong and it's anti-Semitic.

And I released a statement because I wanted folks to understand and put in context what happened.

You had a guy who lost niece and nephew, children, in an attack.

And in his rage and pain, he displaced it on people who never, ever should have been the victims of his violence.

I want us to understand that antisemitism is wrong, but also hurt people hurt people.

And we have to understand the context in which pain is created and then pain gets displaced if we're serious about uprooting that kind of pain.

We released a four and a half minute statement about exactly what happened and how I felt about it.

So I stand in solidarity with Jewish Michiganders and Jewish Americans, frankly, Jewish Israelis.

I stand in solidarity with Jewish people because I believe antisemitism to be wrong.

And I also understand that what the state of Israel is doing in terms of the genocide that it perpetrated in Gaza, in terms of the war that it has pushed an idiot like Donald Trump into finally taking action to pursue in the ways in which they are trying to annex southern Lebanon or decimate the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

That's all wrong.

And we can say multiple things are wrong at the same time without trying to use any of them as justification for another.

In fact, I think if we're serious about trying to uproot the kind of violence that we are seeing take hold, we have to be able to acknowledge the pain that creates it and we have to do something about addressing it.

And I just think that that's where leadership ought to start.