El-Sayed on 60 Minutes: Palestine Has a Right to Exist, Israel Only "If The

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed told CBS's 60 Minutes that Palestine has an unconditional right to exist. When asked the same question about Israel, he attached conditions.

In the interview, which aired Sunday, correspondent Ross Douthat asked El-Sayed whether Israel has a right to exist. El-Sayed responded with his familiar line: "I don't ever get the question of, 'Does Palestine have the right to exist?'"

Douthat then put that question to him, and El-Sayed answered with a simple "Yes." When Douthat asked again whether Israel has a right to exist, El-Sayed began with "S—yes," then qualified it: "If there is a shared understanding—" Douthat cut in, and El-Sayed asked to explain.

He went on to lay out his standard position. "I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination," he said. "If the Palestinian people decide and the Israeli people decide that they want two states for two people, and they decide that on equal terms, I'm for it. If they decide that they want one state shared in a different way, I'm for that."

In the same interview, El-Sayed asserted that "the state of Israel did a genocide."

His Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, told 60 Minutes: "I passionately defend Israel's right to defend itself and to exist as a Jewish state. That sets me at odds with my opponent right off the bat. He refuses to even acknowledge that Israel has the right to exist."

The answer fits a pattern. In a July CNN interview, anchor Kasie Hunt asked El-Sayed three times whether Israel has a right to exist, and he declined to give a direct answer. He said that "the question of Israel's existence is not a question" and that it was "quite secondary to whether it has a right to our tax dollars." In May, at a "Jews for Abdul" event, he said he "struggles" with the question of whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, because it "forces the question of a definition of what a Jewish state means."

The interview aired the same day Rep. Haley Stevens, whom El-Sayed defeated in the Democratic primary, endorsed Rogers. Stevens said El-Sayed had made clear she was not welcome in his campaign. "At some point, you got to look at who's standing for country," she said.

El-Sayed and Rogers face off in Tuesday's election.