Michigan's Democratic attorney general told a private gathering of Jewish party members to put "the rest of humanity" above their own people's safety, a remark critics say twists Jewish scripture to serve partisan ends.
Attorney General Dana Nessel addressed a closed-door meeting of the Michigan Democratic Party's Jewish Caucus on Aug. 30 in Birmingham, Michigan, invoking the biblical story of Queen Esther to argue that Jewish Democrats should prioritize global concerns over the protection of their own community. The event barred members of the press, but a video recording of Nessel's remarks was later reviewed by The Detroit News.
Nessel, who is Jewish, urged attendees to "sacrifice the comfort, safety and security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity." She questioned the value of defending Israel's right to exist if climate change renders the planet uninhabitable, and she described Jewish tradition as demanding "compassionate action toward others" over what she called "blind obedience to the world's biggest and most dangerous fool", a reference to former President Donald Trump.
Hen Mazzig, an author and senior fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute, pushed back on Nessel's use of the Esther story. Mazzig, who describes himself as a gay man and lifelong liberal, said:
"Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel reportedly told Michigan Jewish Democrats to channel Queen Esther and prioritize the survival of 'the world' over their own self-interest."
He continued:
"I am a gay man and lifelong liberal. I understand why many American Jews care so deeply about the Democratic Party. But Esther risked her own safety for the Jewish people's survival, she didn't risk them to save others. Using her story this way is not accurate or helpful."
Mazzig's objection is straightforward: in the Book of Esther, the queen risks her life to save the Jewish people from destruction. She does not ask her people to accept danger for the sake of outsiders. Nessel flipped the moral of the story to argue the opposite, that Jews should absorb risk on behalf of the broader world.
George Mason University constitutional law professor David Bernstein offered a harsher historical comparison:
"You may have thought I was exaggerating when I tweeted last week about how a segment of the American Jewish community is suicidal. The real news here is not that Nessel said this, but that she thinks it's a viable pitch to at least a large segment of an audience of Jewish Democrats."
Bernstein went further, saying Nessel's comments reminded him of "Jewish Stalinists who stayed with Stalin through the pact with Hitler, and then through the antisemitic purges of the late 1940s, because they believed that absorbing this stuff was the price Jews needed to pay for a better world."
The Aug. 30 event was not the only recent occasion on which Nessel addressed Jewish alienation from the Democratic Party. In a separate appearance on The Atlantic's "David Frum Show" podcast, she accused her own party of not valuing its Jewish constituents and making them feel less welcome than members of other minority groups. Fox News Digital previously reported on those remarks.
That warning carries weight given what Jewish Democrats have experienced since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel. Fox News Digital reported that Jewish Democrats have felt increasingly ostracized by their party since that date, and Nessel's own conduct reflects the tension. She skipped a recent Michigan Democratic Party convention, citing safety concerns, though the specific nature of those concerns was not detailed.
So Nessel simultaneously warns that Democrats are driving Jewish voters away, and then tells those same voters to set aside their own community's safety for the party's broader agenda. The contradiction is difficult to miss. She diagnoses the disease on a podcast and then spreads it at a private fundraiser.
Also present at the Aug. 30 gathering was Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate and vocal critic of Israel and U.S. military aid to the country. El-Sayed used the event to publicly apologize to the Jewish Caucus for past controversial comments, remarks he had previously refused to retract. The specific comments were not detailed in reporting on the event.
Nessel herself has withheld her endorsement from El-Sayed over concerns about his stance on Israel. She has also criticized some of his past rhetoric about the Jewish state. At the same time, she has publicly stated she will not vote for Republican Mike Rogers in what reporting describes as a tight Michigan Senate race.
That leaves Nessel in an awkward position: unwilling to endorse the Democrat running for Senate because of his hostility toward Israel, unwilling to vote for the Republican, and simultaneously telling Jewish voters that their instinct to prioritize their own community's welfare is misguided. She wants Jewish Democrats to stay loyal to a party she admits has mistreated them, and to do so by accepting even more of the mistreatment.
Nessel did acknowledge during her Aug. 30 remarks that arguments equating Zionism to racism are often made "by people whose entire understanding of [Jewish-Israeli history] fits neatly into a 47-second TikTok produced by Qatar or Iran." That line suggests she recognizes the bad faith behind much anti-Israel activism on the left.
But recognizing the problem and asking Jewish voters to absorb it anyway are two different things. Nessel's speech amounted to telling her audience: yes, much of the hostility you face is manufactured by foreign propaganda, now please set aside your own safety for the people consuming that propaganda.
Fox News Digital reached out to Nessel's office for comment on the Aug. 30 remarks but did not receive a response before publication.
Michigan is a crucial battleground state, and the Democratic Party's internal divisions over Israel have real electoral consequences. Jewish Democrats who have felt sidelined since Oct. 7 now have their own state attorney general, a fellow Jewish Democrat, telling them their desire for communal safety is less important than the party's global vision.
Bernstein's observation cuts to the core of the matter. The striking part of Nessel's speech is not that she said it. Politicians say reckless things behind closed doors all the time. The striking part is that she believed a room full of Jewish Democrats would find the argument persuasive, that asking a minority community to deprioritize its own survival is a winning pitch.
When a party's elected officials tell a vulnerable community to sacrifice its own security for the greater good, that community should take them at their word, and act accordingly.
