Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, apologized to the state’s Jewish Democratic Caucus on Saturday for comments he made after an attack on a synagogue in March, which he tied to Israel’s actions in the Middle East.

“My comments may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify,” El-Sayed told reporters after he addressed the caucus at a party convention in Lansing. “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”

In March, a man attacked Temple Israel synagogue in a Detroit suburb, ramming his car into the building and opening fire on a security guard before dying by suicide.

The man, Ayman Mohammad Ghazali, had lost four relatives in an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon the week prior. However, El-Sayed failed to mention one  “small detail”—that the Michigan terrorist was the brother of a Hezbollah commander who oversaw the launch of hundreds of rockets toward Israel and was eliminated in an IDF strike on a terror facility during Operation Roaring Lion.

In a video response at the time, El-Sayed condemned the attack and added that “hurt people hurt people,” a reference to “what happened” to Ghazali’s family. He did not mention the family’s involvement with a U.S. designated terror group.

“What I was trying to do was offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context,” El-Sayed said on Saturday, “and you don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain.”

Earlier this month, it was revealed that El-Sayed’s mother worked for five years for an organization that the U.S. Treasury Department later designated over its financial links to Hamas, the Taliban and other terrorist networks.

El-Sayed’s apology was his latest attempt to unify Democrats after a bitter primary where he defeated U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens. He’s eager to push past a series of controversies involving allegations of antisemitism, including his association with controversial commentator Hasan Piker. He faces Republican nominee Mike Rogers in a race that will help determine control of the Senate.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)