WASHINGTON — The New Jersey Democrats’ newly crowned nominee for the 12th Congressional District race, Adam Hamawy, once spent a month at a hospital in Gaza, which he insisted was “completely benign” months before the Israelis found a tunnel system leading to a Hamas leader.
Hamawy, an Egyptian-born former combat surgeon, had done volunteer work at Gaza’s European Hospital in May 2024 for several weeks and later publicly fended off accusations that Hamas was operating there.
“In my three weeks at the European Hospital, I did not see a single weapon. Not one rifle. Not one pistol. Not one grenade launcher. This was a completely benign civilian hospital with no tunnels underneath it,” he told Jacobin Magazine months later in August 2024.
Questions about Hamawy’s shocking ties to people or organizations associated with terrorism loomed over his campaign, but there hasn’t been proof that he was personally involved in terrorism.
Notably, Hamawy fought for the US in the Iraq War, where he served as a surgeon and later received awards for his service. Sen. Tammy Duckwork (D-Ill.) has said he saved her life after she was injured when her helicopter was taken down.
The future congressional hopeful reiterated his claims about the hospital in Gaza being benign multiple times publicly, as the Washington Free Beacon reported.
But about a year after his volunteer work at the facility, Israel took down notorious Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, who was a mastermind of the bloody Oct. 7, 2023, attack. He was also the brother of Yahya Sinwar, the notorious leader of Hamas at the time of the attack.
Other top, now deceased Hamas leaders worked out of there, such as the terror group’s Rafah Brigade commander, Mohammad Shabana, and South Khan Younis Battalion commander Mahdi Quara, according to the Times of Israel.
Hamawy had decried the conditions on the ground in the beleaguered Gaza Strip that he observed, describing it as “numbing” and railing against Israeli operations revolving around hospitals and civilian areas where the government accused Hamas of being embedded.
“The excuse is always that these are hideouts for terrorists,” Hamawy told Jacobin. “There have been over fifty [medics] from the United States who have been there at different times in different places throughout the Gaza Strip. None of them witnessed anything like that.”
Just before Hamawy won the Democratic primary in a crowded field to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman’s (D-NJ), revelations emerged that he once volunteered in Bosnia via a Chicago-based nonprofit whose offices were raided in 2002 after it was determined to be a front for al-Qaeda.
Hamawy had done a brief stint with the “Benevolence International Foundation” in 1994, telling a local paper he “worked in Sarajevo for 10 days and then the rest in Zenica, a large regional center in central Bosnia.”
Years later, the 9/11 Commission Report called the foundation’s operation in Bosnia part of an “impressive array of offices [that] covertly provided financial and other support for terrorist activities” that Osama bin Laden relied on in the 1990s.
Agents later found a photo of bin Laden, documents about the terror group’s operations, weapons, letters from the terror group’s leaders, and more during the raid. Jewish Insider first reported on Hamawy’s history with the foundation.
“Dr. Adam Hamawy, as a young medical student and member of the US military, volunteered to provide medical assistance to victims of the Bosnian genocide, per the suggestion the Bosnian mission made to him on how to help via a United Nations-approved route,” his spokesperson told The Post.
“The idea that this absurd claim could be seriously entertained about the work of a veteran who served our country for twenty years, was awarded the Global War on Terrorism medal for his service in Iraq, and climbed the rubble at Ground Zero searching for survivors on 9/11 would be laughable if it weren’t so gross and bigoted.”
Before that history was unearthed, it was also known that Hamawy had ties to late al-Qaeda mastermind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as “The Blind Sheik.”
Abdel-Rahman died in 2017.
“The Blind Sheik” was convicted in the mid-1990s for championing a “war of urban terrorism” against the US in the wake of a terror crackdown following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Hamawy first met Abdel-Rahman and embarked on a road trip for a conference to Detroit, where “the Blind Sheik” allegedly mused about “conquering the land of the infidels,” per a court transcript. Hamawy testified on Abdel-Rahman’s behalf and claimed the remarks were taken out of context.
The Post contacted Hamawy’s campaign for comment.
