The Democratic Party has a problem with America and those who seek to undermine it from within its own ranks. It’s not just a matter of policy issues. Nothing makes that clearer than the case of Adam Hamawy. How it responds to Hamawy’s win in the congressional primary in New Jersey’s 12th district will indicate the direction of the party and whether it supports candidates who have openly worked for violent terrorists against the very democratic institutions that they seek to destroy.
Hamawy was born in Egypt and immigrated to the United States as a child. In the early 1990s, he became a member of the tight circle surrounding the "Blind Sheikh," Omar Abdel-Rahman. His social DNA is about one thing: violent jihad.
Hamawy became Abdel-Rahman’s interpreter, attending his extreme sermons inciting jihad against “disbelievers.” In February 1993, the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center killed six people, including a pregnant woman, and injured roughly 1,000 others. In June of that year, Abdel-Rahman was arrested. Between those dates, Hamawy maintained close contact with the sheikh, reportedly helping him formulate a denial of involvement in the attack.
At Abdel-Rahman’s 1995 trial, Hamawy testified as a defense witness in what is widely regarded as deliberate perjury. He claimed the sheikh had spoken at an “economic conference” in Detroit in 1991. In fact, the conference title was “The Best Way to Support Jihad.” Hamawy testified that Abdel-Rahman had not called for violence against the United States or Israel, while simultaneously admitting that the sheikh described them as enemies of Islam requiring sustained jihad. Abdel-Rahman was convicted on charges related to the Twin Towers attack, plots against other New York landmarks, planning the assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and inciting terrorism.
Hamawy heard the sheikh’s calls for holy war over and over and did not go to the authorities. Instead, he minimized and denied those statements, including while under oath.
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In an effort to pasteurize Hamawy’s terrorist ties, he is being touted as a doctor. Yet Hamawy has used the cover of being a doctor to act on behalf of terrorist organizations for whom the Hippocratic Oath means nothing. Their only oath is to “allah” and Islamist jihad. Hamawy volunteered as a medical staff member in Bosnia with an arm of Al-Qaeda, which he claims he was unaware of. He then joined the U.S. Army and served as a combat surgeon. Yet his proximity to radical Islam did not diminish. In 2024, he volunteered at a Khan Younis hospital in Gaza, claiming he encountered no Hamas terror tunnels and saw no evidence the hospital was used as a Hamas facility. This is difficult to reconcile with the documented reality that Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar used those very tunnels to evade capture after the October 7, 2023, massacre.
Hamawy refuses to call Hamas’s perpetrators terrorists. At his victory celebration, supporters included Mohammed Katnani, convicted in Israel for Hamas association, and Linda Sarsour, who has praised the intifada and publicly celebrated relatives imprisoned in Israel for involvement in terrorism.
Further whitewashing over Hamawy’s terrorist ties, his campaign emphasized healthcare, veterans’ issues, economic justice, and sharp criticism of U.S. support for Israel. Yet beyond the social justice, some lawmakers are now warning that if elected, his past terrorist ties could pose a national security risk and that he should be barred from sensitive national security committees such as Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, and Intelligence Committees, which have broad, regular access to classified briefings.
Hamawy’s primary campaign outraised all the others significantly, with major financial support from Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated networks, including CAIR Action, Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, and Emgage Action. A pro-Palestinian super PAC spent approximately $2 million supporting him. New Jersey voters need to decide if they are comfortable with supporting a candidate whose primary support comes from those implicated in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial and use American democracy to undermine it.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. charged us to judge someone not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Other than dismissing his critics as “Islamophobic,” there is an inevitable reflex to view Hamawy as a person of color. But Adam Hamawy should not be considered as a candidate based on the color of his skin. He should be judged by his character. And his character, marked by aiding a jihadi terrorist sheikh, lying in that sheikh’s defense, ongoing associations with Al-Qaeda and Hamas, and broad financial support from Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups, calls that character into serious question.
The election in which he could frighteningly become the next U.S. congressman from New Jersey’s 12th district will take place seven weeks after the 25th anniversary of the horrific day when 3,000 people were killed by Islamic terrorists of the same jihadi ideology that Hamawy has associated with, and whose supporters have backed him.
By aiding the Blind Sheikh, who was convicted of plotting to bring down the Twin Towers in 1993, the Egyptian Hamawy’s terrorist associations are plain as day. The question is whether Americans, and voters in New Jersey’s 12th district in particular, will be blind to the deception or pave the way for the jihadi plot to use America’s own freedoms, institutions, and democracy to take over, as was documented in the Holy Land Foundation trial.
Trenton is just 52 miles from Ground Zero. Electing Adam Hamawy would be an affront to the memory of every person killed that day, to their loved ones who still mourn, and to the United States. It would risk bringing terror to New Jersey’s 12th.
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