Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told CNN he sees no difference between Israel’s government and Hamas, because to him both are “evil.”

El-Sayed shared his thoughts on Israel and the terrorist group running Gaza during an interview with CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju on Sunday.

Raju noted El-Sayed — who was born in Michigan to parents from Egypt — is locked in a tight battle to win the open Senate seat in his home state. But there is a “glaring divide” among voters and candidates over Israel he reported, especially in towns like Dearborn, which has one of the highest per capita rates of Muslims in the U.S., and in Oakland County, which has a “big Jewish voting bloc.”

“You said the Israeli government is evil, do you think they’re just as evil as Hamas?” Raju asked.

“Yes, killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil,” El-Sayed answered. “It’s not how evil is this one versus that one — Hamas: Evil, Israeli government: Evil. We can say both.”

Raju then asked him if he believed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a “war criminal.” El-Sayed did not hesitate in telling him “Absolutely.”

“When you conduct a genocide, you’re a war criminal,” he added.

His answer comes after Israel and Gaza have become a bigger issue in American politics over the last few years, following the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023 that killed approximately 1,200 people; Hamas militants took hundreds of others back to Gaza as hostages, including 12 Americans.

Israel launched the war in Gaza in response, which lasted about two years until the ceasefire deal President Donald Trump spearheaded was made last fall.

El-Sayed jumped to the lead in the Democratic Party primary last week — narrowly overtaking state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-MI) — according to a new Emerson poll of likely voters. He had 24% of voters backing him, just ahead of McMorrow’s 23.6%, while Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) landed in third with 13.4% of the vote.

The poll came shortly after El-Sayed had popular progressive streamer Hasan Piker as a special guest at one of his rallies. Piker has said America “deserved” the 9/11 attacks and more recently argued Hamas is the “lesser of two evils” compared to Israel.

El-Sayed told Raju that it was “disastrous” that Stevens had received funding from AIPAC, before saying “You should be more interested in what’s happening in Michigan than you are interested in what’s happening in Tel Aviv.”

Watch above.

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