Haley Stevens Smears Sanders, Calls Anti-Zionism a ‘Sickness’

Haley Stevens at her primary night watch party at on Aug. 4, 2026, in Detroit. (Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images.)

The Michigan loser endorsed the victor, then went to Israel to complain about El-Sayed’s ‘poisonous’ approach, and said she doesn’t know ‘what Bernie Sanders has done for peace in the Middle East.’

By Martin Pengelly, reposted from Zeteo, September 03, 2026

The U.S. House of Representatives came back into session this week, after the long summer break. Rep. Haley Stevens had a longer journey to Washington than most, having arrived back from Israel Tuesday morning, as she described in the chamber. Then on Wednesday, the Jerusalem Post published an interview conducted at the five-star Mamilla Hotel in the city, during a visit the congresswoman took with her new fiancé, a Michigan lawyer whose family comes from Haifa.

“I believe that anti-Zionism is a hate movement that has taken over in America and throughout parts of the West,” Stevens told the Post, giving the paper its headline.

“I think that Israel is more than just a punching bag for some of the challenges that America is facing,” the congresswoman added. “There is this bizarre obsession that has reached pitch level with calling out one country, one tiny country in the Middle East.”

According to the Post, as Stevens complained of being “demonized” for her support for that “one tiny country” – which, lest we forget, is committing genocide against the Palestinian people – her voice rose “with a mix of frustration and disbelief.” On reading Stevens’s words, supporters of Abdul El-Sayed, who beat Stevens in last month’s Michigan Democratic Senate primary, might have experienced similar emotions.

Once the primary result was in, Stevens endorsed El-Sayed. “That’s called democracy,” she told Fox then. “You don’t sign up for a Democratic Party to be salty grapes and… just continue to hold a grudge.” To a lot of Democrats, after a bruising campaign, that sounded good. A few weeks on, though, Stevens’s comments in Jerusalem sure didn’t sound a million miles from “salty grapes.”

Certainly, the Michigan contest was brutal, and might’ve left its loser feeling sore. In a state with a significant Muslim population, but also mirroring trends in national public polling, Israel, the aid the U.S. gives it, and the Netanyahu regime’s genocide in Gaza and illegal occupation in the West Bank became central campaign issues. Stevens attracted more than $30 million in spending from AIPAC, the pro-Israel group now a lightning rod in Democratic politics. El-Sayed fought off incessant, baseless accusations of antisemitism from his own party as well as the right. He is fighting off such attacks now, even as he attempts to focus on Mike Rogers, his well-funded, Trump-supporting Republican opponent.

And yet, while complaining of being threatened herself, Stevens decided to tell the Jerusalem Post that El-Sayed’s use of Israel as a campaign subject was “poisonous,” then said of the man she endorsed: “Abdul has done a very good job on the internet, you know, and being anti-Israel is also very popular on the internet.”

Of reasons why Israel might attract such criticism, on the internet or otherwise – including its genocidal violence but also the brutalization of foreign peace activists and violence against American citizens and even an NBC news crew – Stevens did not speak. She had nothing to say about any of that.

But she was keen to say that anti-Zionism has “infected Democrats worse” than any other group, adding: “We have one Jewish state, one teeny tiny Jewish state. Why can’t we have a Jewish state? And there’s become this anti-Zionist hate and this assumption that this is colonial. And it is not. It is just people in their homeland trying to live.”

Her interviewer chose not to point out how ironic that statement might have sounded to Palestinians.

Stevens did say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has been a problem,” adding: “Your current government should not encapsulate a full people.” That echoed her remarks on the House floor Tuesday, when she spoke of visiting Gaza and witnessing “the urgent work of getting food and medicine to innocent people trapped in a war they did not choose,” though she also mentioned meeting World Central Kitchen workers without reference to the deaths of seven in an Israeli strike.

Then Stevens did something really odd: She attacked Bernie Sanders.

“I really don’t know what Bernie Sanders has done for peace in the Middle East, for Palestinian dignity,” Stevens said. “I can’t think of anything he’s totally done. It’s a sickness that needs to end. You know, it’s a linkage towards extremism or Jihad, I don’t know.”

Senator Sanders is not just a senior figure in Congress, twice a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, a senior voice on the left of a caucus supposed to be uniting to fight the most consequential midterm elections in a generation, seeking to hold Donald Trump to account, to reverse his assault on democracy itself. Sanders endorsed El-Sayed. And is Jewish.

With that, Stevens’s comments had gone way beyond mere “salty grapes,” into the outright bizarre – and offensive.

Summing up, Stevens told the Post Israelis should “Believe in yourselves and be proud of who you are.” The Jewish people, she said, “are a strong and resilient group. There will be voices like mine, whether I’m in elected office or not, that will be joining with other voices to stop anti-Zionism. We will continue to call it out.”

Is this a woman really working for a Democratic Senate victory in Michigan in November?

Martin Pengelly is a reporter for Zeteo.

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