OAK PARK, Michigan (JTA) — Karen Bick has spent the days leading up to Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary fielding calls from Jewish friends urging her to vote for US Rep. Haley Stevens.

Despite the pressure, Bick, 69, said she plans to sit out Tuesday’s vote altogether. As much as she is compelled by the campaign of Stevens’s progressive opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, his accusations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza have kept her from voting for him. Stevens’s campaign, she said, hasn’t given her enough reason to vote for her instead.

“I am very pro-Israel. I’m not pro-Netanyahu, which is part of the whole thing. A lot of my friends who are Jewish have been calling me, trying to get Haley, but it’s like they’re looking at one issue,” said Bick, a Jewish resident of Oak Park, a suburb of Detroit. “I don’t think that Israel should take precedence over all the other issues just because somebody’s pro-Israel.”

Bick’s ambivalence reflects a divide among Michigan Jews in a primary where Israel has emerged as one of the sharpest contrasts between the candidates. Stevens has served in the House since 2019 as a reliable supporter of Israel, while El-Sayed, a former county health official, has made opposition to US support for Israel and AIPAC’s spending in the race a hallmark of his campaign.

That doesn’t mean El-Sayed is without Jewish supporters.

Barbara Weinberg Barefield, a longtime Detroit resident who helped found the city’s Jewish Voice for Peace chapter, has been campaigning for El-Sayed since the beginning of the race, including organizing fundraisers, phone banking and canvassing. She also helped organize “Jews for Abdul,” a group of Jewish supporters working to elect him.

Weinberg Barefield, 76, said that El-Sayed’s use of the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza was an essential component of her support for him.

“We are trying to let people know that there are many Jewish people that support Abdul and support his objectives and support his voice,” Weinberg Barefield said. “Justice, equality, and freedom are part of the fabric of me........

© The Times of Israel