IFC: El-Sayed’s Selective Silence Erases a Global Pattern of Jihadist Violence — From Gaza’s Victims to Africa’s Slaves
Boston, Massachusetts
The International Freedom Coalition (IFC), representing communities from Sudan to Nigeria to Syria, Iraq and Lebanon who have lived under jihadist violence, today condemned Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed for his conduct around the October 7 anniversary, during which he declined to acknowledge Hamas’s massacre of Israelis, walked away when pressed on the anniversary by reporters, and dismissed his opponent’s recitation of Hamas’s atrocities as “political theater.” IFC leaders say his posture is yet another instance of leftist and Islamist movements working in tandem to erase and deny the plight of jihad’s victims worldwide.
“Israel is not a special case,” said Dr. Charles Jacobs, president of the International Freedom Coalition. “It is just the most visible member of a vast class of people that the left and its Islamist partners do not want people to see: along with Israelis, Sudanese, Nigerians, Yazidis, Copts, Kurds, Alawites, Lebanese, Iranian dissidents and many more are victims of jihadism. They are killed, enslaved and abused, yet so-called progressives, who rightly fought for minority rights in the past, have abandoned these people today.”
IFC member communities know well this strategy that El-Sayed and his allies have adopted.
Daowd Salid, Sudanese member of the IFC coalition: “Jihadist militias armed by Khartoum enslaved and massacred my people in Sudan and Darfur for decades. Mr. El-Sayed, you ask Michigan to send you to the Senate— will you speak about our reality, or walk away from us too?”
Stephen Enada, Nigerian member of the IFC coalition: “Boko Haram jihadists have murdered thousands of Nigerian Christians and abducted our daughters, and the international left has never once marched for us. Will you condemn the jihadists who do this, Mr. El-Sayed?”
John Hajjar, American-Lebanese Christian member of the IFC coalition: “Hezbollah, a Khomeinist-backed jihadist militia, has held the country of my ancestors hostage and silenced its Christian and Druze communities for forty years. “Jihadism from the Ottoman Turks starved to death over 200,000 Christian Lebanese in the ‘Kafno’; my grandparents were lucky to survive with nothing more than the clothes on their back”. Mr. El-Sayed, will the next senator from Michigan ever name that militia as the terrorists they are?”
Ayellet Aviv, Israeli-Jewish member of the IFC coalition: “On October 7, Hamas raped, tortured, and murdered my people simply for being Jewish, in their own homes. Americans were also among the victims. Yet a man seeking to represent Michigan in Washington could not bring himself to acknowledge that day and dismissed someone else’s commemoration as ‘theater.’
Mr. El-Sayed, are you dismissing Jewish suffering while diverting attention from the atrocities committed by those whose ideology you refuse to condemn?”
Dr. Charles Jacobs, president of the International Freedom Coalition, said, “Perhaps Abdul El-Sayed attacks the Jewish state to distract from the real and horrible crimes that his allies in the jihadist realm are committing around the world.”
“We urge him to issue an unqualified condemnation of Hamas’s October 7 atrocities, without caveat or evasion, and to extend that same condemnation to every jihadist movement— Boko Haram, ISIS, Hezbollah, and the networks behind them — that has killed, enslaved, or displaced the communities IFC represents.”
“A Senate candidate who cannot unequivocally condemn October 7 as a barbaric act surely cannot be trusted to name jihad when it strikes anyone else,” said Dr. Walid Phares, IFC vice president. “Mr. El-Sayed, the microphone is yours. Name the enemy.”
About the International Freedom Coalition
The International Freedom Coalition (IFC) unites communities that have suffered jihadist violence and institutional erasure — including Sudanese, Nigerian, Lebanese, Kurdish, Coptic, Iranian, Syrian, Alawite, Druze and Israeli communities — in a shared, documented record of atrocities that the United Nations and major Western human rights bodies have declined to compile.
Media Contact Information
Ellie Raymond
press@internationalfreedomcoalition.org
