Candidate Who Was a Defense Witness for ‘Blind Sheikh’ Poised To Win Democratic Primary for New Jersey House Seat

An American plastic surgeon who worked in a Gazan hospital during the Israel-Hamas war is on the verge of a major victory in the Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 12th congressional district despite multiple questions about his links to terrorist groups and defense of the World Trade Center bombing conspirator, Omar Abdel Rahman.Dr. Adam Hamawy, a U.S. Army veteran credited with saving the life of Senator Tammy Duckworth, is running against 11 other Democrats to fill the seat in the deep blue district that is opening up due to the retirement of Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman.Dr. Hamawy says he was motivated to run largely based on his experience in Gaza, where he worked for three weeks as a trauma doctor in May 2024 during the war that followed Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre on Israel. He accused the Jewish state of carrying out a genocide. “You can only do so much as an advocate; you can make real change as a congressman,” Dr. Hamawy told HuffPost, explaining his decision to run for Congress. He has received the endorsements of far-left personalities such as Senator Bernie Sanders, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and commentator Hasan Piker. An internal poll released last month showed that he held a seven-point lead over his closest competitor, liberal activist Sue Altman. As Dr. Hamawy appears poised to win the primary, opponents are highlighting his ties to terrorists and terror organizations, including the U.S.-sanctioned Benevolence International Foundation and Rahman, who is better known as the “Blind Sheikh” and was convicted of seditious conspiracy for encouraging the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Rahman was also accused of plotting to assassinate a former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. During Rahman’s trial, Dr. Hamawy was called as a defense witness and testified that he did not hear the sheikh encourage the government’s star witness to kill Mubarak.A conservative commentator at National Review, Andrew McCarthy, the lead prosecutor in Rahman’s case, wrote on May 7 that he remembers Dr. Hamawy “only dimly.” He said during cross-examination, Dr. Hamawy “acknowledged that the Sheikh spoke at the conference about the obligation of jihad against ‘the enemies of Islam’ such as the United States and Israel, and about ‘conquering the land of the infidels.’”“Of course, that’s what he always talked about,” he said. “[Rahman] talked about jihad.”Prosecutors never accused Dr. Hamawy of wrongdoing, but Mr. McCarthy argues that he is a “sympathizer of an infamous anti-American terrorist.”The candidate has also faced criticism for volunteering in Bosnia in the summer of 1994 with the Al Qaeda front group, the Benevolence International Foundation. Last week, Jewish Insider reported on his time volunteering there and noted that the 9/11 Commission Report said that the locations where Dr. Hamawy volunteered contained an “impressive array of offices (that) covertly provided financial and other support for terrorist activities” for Osama bin Laden. Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana shared the report on X and called Dr. Hamawy an “actual terrorist.”Dr. Hamawy has not denied his associations with Rahman or the Benevolence International Foundation. He told HuffPost that conservatives are “just falling back to their old playbook” by “calling Muslims terrorists.” In an interview with the New York Times, Dr. Hamawy downplayed Rahman’s rhetoric about the “obligation for jihad,” calling him a “blind old man” who needed volunteers to care for him. Contrary to his testimony, he said that Rahman “wasn’t preaching death and destruction all the time.” He had “certain views that he spoke in certain forums, but that’s not what he did every single day.” As questions about Dr. Hamawy’s association with Rahman have swirled during the campaign, he has denounced the sheikh’s “violent rhetoric and actions.” Responding to concerns about this association with the Benevolence International Foundation, Dr. Hamawy told HuffPost that the organization had been praised by President Clinton’s administration years before its Al Qaeda connection was exposed. While Dr. Hamawy’s associations with terror-linked groups go back more than 30 years, his proximity to terrorists does not lie only in the past. Dr. Hamawy denied seeing any terrorists or terror network operations while serving at the Gaza European Hospital.“I didn’t see any guns in the hospital; there was no one that I could identify as a combatant. There were definitely no tunnels underground, and no command base there,” Dr. Hamawy told the Rowan University Muslim Student Association and Rowan Students for Justice in Palestine at a speech in October 2024. There’s been no evidence to actually show that anyone like that was there.”However, in May 2025, an Israeli strike on the tunnels under the hospital killed Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas’s Rafah Brigade commander, Mohammad Shabana, and the South Khan Younis Battalion commander, Mahdi Quaraand. The Washington Free Beacon notes that several of Dr. Hamawy’s donors were also doctors at Gazan hospitals where terrorists maintained command posts.

Candidate Who Was a Defense Witness for ‘Blind Sheikh’ Poised To Win Democratic Primary for New Jersey House Seat

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