El-Sayed gives a conditional answer on Israel's right to exist on 60 Minutes, a day after a Democrat endorsed his Republican opponent

The exchange is short and it is now the clip of the race's final weekend. Douthat asked El-Sayed whether Palestine has a right to exist. “Yes,” he said. Douthat asked whether Israel has the right to exist. “Yes, if there is a shared understanding,” El-Sayed began, and then laid out his position at length: “I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike. 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 he said the state of Israel committed a genocide in Gaza, opposed using taxpayer dollars for Israeli defense and the war in Iran, and named equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis as his highest priority in the region. It was not a new position for him. In a July interview, CNN's Kasie Hunt asked him three times whether Israel has a right to exist and he declined to give a direct answer.

Rogers used his own segment of the same broadcast to draw the contrast in one sentence. “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 interview ranged past the Middle East. Asked about parents' control over their children's education and about transgender children on sports teams, El-Sayed answered, “I think we manufacture these social issues.” That answer landed in a state where the locker room and sports questions have driven school board fights for years, and it landed on the same Sunday that Stevens, the Democrat he beat by a point in August, stood in a Detroit church and endorsed Rogers, the story this site reported on Sunday night. The RealClearPolitics average had El-Sayed ahead by about four points as of October 29, and the final New York Times and Siena polling put him ahead by more. Tuesday's voters will decide whether the last 72 hours of his campaign, an endorsement from his own party's congresswoman for his opponent and a conditional answer on Israel in front of a national audience, moved a race that was already inside the margin where small numbers of voters settle it.