Earlier this month, how did Abdul El-Sayed, a far-left candidate in the Democrat primary for an open Michigan Senate seat, mark the second anniversary of Hamas' slaughter of 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023?
By sending out a fundraising email.
Adding ghoulish insult to injury, El-Sayed's email began:
"Two years ago this month, Netanyahu's military launched a ground invasion of Gaza."
Incredibly, El-Sayed's email failed to mention the Hamas attack that prompted Israel's response.
When El-Sayed's heartless, utterly misleading message provoked predictable outrage, El-Sayed said that sending it was a "mistake."
Host Audie Cornish chose to have El-Sayed as a guest on Wednesday's episode of CNN This Morning. If Cornish, formerly of NPR, were anything close to being a real journalist, she surely would have grilled El-Sayed on his "mistake."
But just as El-Sayed never mentioned the Hamas attack in his October 7th fundraiser, neither did Cornish breathe a word of his outrage in their conversation.
To the contrary, Cornish abetted El-Sayed's attempt to scapegoat Israel.
Four times during their conversation, El-Sayed accused Israel of "genocide" in Gaza. Rather than offering any counterevidence to his slander, Cornish sought to buttress it, saying:
"We should note for our viewers that an independent entity connected to the UN made that determination about genocide. That is sort of the most direct version we have heard of that."
The determination in question was issued by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Cornish description of it as "the most direct version" on the subject was her attempt to persuade viewers that the Commission's finding that Israel was guilty of genocide was the most objective, authoritative word on the subject. It was anything but, as people familiar with the UN's history of outrageous anti-Israel bias would know.
The Commission was composed of three people. One of them, Miloon Kothari, in an interview with the virulently anti-Israel outlet Mondoweiss, questioned why Israel should even be entitled to UN membership. He also embraced a classic antisemitic trope, claiming that the "Jewish lobby" controls social media.
Kothari later apologized for his comments. Just like El-Sayed: slander first, make a quiet apology later.
A second member of the Commission, Chris Sidoti, claimed that "the Israeli army is one of the most criminal armies in the world.” In fact, according to John Spencer, Executive Director of the Urban Warfare Institute, "Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any military in history."
You get the picture. Yet it was the determination of this Commission that Cornish chose to rely on to bolster El-Sayed's accusations against Israel of "genocide."
Note: In 2021, in an item entitled "Get Him a Map!", I caught El-Sayed, in another CNN appearance, describing West Virginia as a "coastal state." Seems Abdul's tenuous grasp on reality hasn't improved since then.
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
10/15/25
6:48 am EDTABDUL EL-SAYED: Right now, this so-called deal puts all of the power back in the hands of the people who just perpetrated a genocide. There's no accountability, whether that's for Netanyahu and his enablers, or that's for our government's funding of this genocide for two years.
. . .
When I talk about Gaza, we have to recognize that every dollar that we spent subsidizing a genocide in Gaza, 21 billion of them, is a dollar we didn't spend investing in feeding our kids here at home, investing in providing health care or infrastructure here at home. The people of Michigan have suffered as a consequence of our misappropriation. Now, take that and recognize that our money was being used to fuel a genocide, taking food away from other kids and health care and schools away from other kids.
AUDIE CORNISH: Yeah.
El-SAYED: And that is a moral catastrophe. So my question is, who's willing to deal with that moral catastrophe and make sure that never happens again?
CORNISH: It's interesting. And one, we should note for our viewers that an independent entity connected to the UN made that determination about genocide. That is sort of the most direct version we have heard of that.
