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A heated debate over criticism of Israel and the political influencer Hasan Piker’s role on the left has bitterly divided progressive and establishment Democrats in a US Senate race in Michigan, an electorally critical swing state. The ongoing controversy likely marks a preview of things to come as the midterm and 2028 election seasons ramp up, and it is drawing warnings from Arab American leaders in a state where the party’s Israel policy badly damaged Kamala Harris’s campaign.

Mallory McMorrow, a state senator favored by much of the establishment, is locked in a tight three-way race with the progressive Abdul El-Sayed, and Haley Stevens, the US representative who is backed by Aipac. El-Sayed and Piker last week announced plans to rally together. In response, McMorrow, the Anti-Defamation League, the Trump administration, Third Way, Senator Elissa Slotkin and other pro-Israel figures went on the offensive, labeling Piker as antisemitic and seeking to tar El-Sayed over his association with him.

Piker, who is Muslim and has an audience of 3 million on the Twitch streaming platform, often strongly criticizes Israel over its assault on Gaza, Lebanon invasion, war with Iran, treatment of Palestinian people, and other issues, sometimes in provocative terms – he described Hamas as “a thousand times better than the fascist settler colonial apartheid state”. He is also a heavyweight political force with a massive following among younger voters: Piker interviewed and earned praise from Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, and was invited by the Harris campaign to livestream from the Democratic national convention in August 2024.

Seven Arab American leaders who spoke with the Guardian say centrist Democrats’ attack on El-Sayed and Piker are strategic and moral blunders that show the party is making the same mistakes that fueled their 2024 electoral demise in this critical swing state and nationally.

They dismissed the attacks as an effort to censor criticism of Israel, and an expression of anti-Arab bias that imbues much of the political establishment. Michigan holds the nation’s largest Arab American population per capita in the US, and it is anchored by a huge Lebanese diaspora largely from southern Lebanon. The controversy unfolds amid Israel’s assault on southern Lebanon, and as Israel and its military action are deeply unpopular among Democrats.

“They are not showing empathy toward Lebanese and Muslim communities,” said Basim Elkarra, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations Action.

Harris lost Michigan in 2024 by a narrow 80,000 votes, and by one estimate support for Israel cost her 100,000 votes here. A November 2024 Guardian analysis found a 22,000-vote swing away from Democrats in the three cities with the largest Arab American and Muslim populations alone. Nationally, one poll found it to be the top issue for Democrats who did not support Harris.

“Some in the Democratic party haven’t learned from 2024,” Elkarra added. “Especially in a battleground state, I think they’re going to suffer the consequences in 2028 if they don’t rectify their strategy.”

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This moment in Michigan is particularly sensitive. McMorrow and her surrogates have said Piker should be shunned because the rallies come less than a month after the Temple Israel synagogue attack, which was widely condemned by the Arab American community in Michigan. McMorrow did not respond to requests for comment.

“That is not somebody that you should be campaigning with at a moment when there is clearly a lot of pain and trauma across our state,” McMorrow said to Jewish Insider while highlighting that children were at the synagogue. “You don’t fan the flames.”

But Arab American and Muslim community leaders who spoke with the Guardian stressed that both sides’ suffering can be acknowledged as the Middle East conflict intensifies. They see the exclusion of their pain as a deliberate political maneuver.

Israel’s Lebanon invasion has displaced more than 1 million civilians in recent months, and the IDF has begun wiping out Lebanese villages that some Michiganders or their families are from “in accordance with the model in Gaza”, in the words of Israel’s defense minister. Virtually every one of the 120,000 Lebanese American people in Michigan have family members or friends who have been displaced or killed by Israel, Arab Americans who spoke with the Guardian said.

“There is an asymmetry of compassion and asymmetry of political pressure – Arabs get the pressure and Israel gets compassion,” said James Zogby, a Lebanese American member of the Democratic National Committee. “No one will pay attention to the human element of the situation, which is that their ancestral village is gone, and their homes demolished.”

In an interview with the Guardian, El-Sayed expressed a similar sentiment: “The Arab community, their voice and their pain has been rendered insignificant or, even worse, an inconvenient aspect of our political situation.”

National polling shows more Democrats sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis, support for Israel’s war in Gaza plummeted as low as 8% among party voters, and the vast majority of Democrats support an arms embargo. Piker frequently expresses sympathy for the Palestinian people, criticizes Israel’s wars, and calls for an arms embargo.

Piker called the Temple Israel attack a “heinous act of violence”. But he said also believes it is “Islamophobic to say: ‘Oh, this Muslim critic of Israel who has the majority opinion on Israel should not be going to a campaign rally.’

“Michigan is a state [Democrats] lost for this exact reason.”

When asked about a comment in which he labeled some Orthodox Jews in Israel “inbred”, Piker told the Guardian he uses the term “as a pejorative against ethnoreligious and racial supremacists of all different varieties – it has nothing to do with Judaism”. He has largely said he stands by his comments, but has also recently expressed regret about the “inbred” comment, and said he could have been more careful.

Piker said he regularly educates listeners about the dangers of antisemitism and “how it is the canary in the coal mine of fascism”.

“I will continue to do this because antisemitism is morally repugnant, but the difference is I believe that antisemitism and Islamophobia are morally repugnant … and I’m an anti-genocide, antifascist and therefore an antizionist,” Piker said.

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Though many of El-Sayed’s and Piker’s political positions are aligned, El-Sayed told the Guardian he did not agree with everything Piker has said, and he also offered an explanation on X. But he said winning requires talking with anyone from Joe Rogan to Hasan Piker. To illustrate the point, El-Sayed appeared on Fox News last week.

The interests of all Michiganders and Arab Americans are “one and the same”, El-Sayed said.

“Every dollar that we spend on an aimless, illegal, unjustified war in Iran that allows Israel to annex southern Lebanon and destroy people and their lives, is a dollar not spent to improve our schools, provide people with healthcare and fix our broken infrastructure.”