A man whose family was profoundly scarred by radical Islamic terrorism says he is alarmed by what he views as a growing number of candidates with extremist views winning Democratic Party primaries.
“When it comes to terrorist sympathizers, I don’t really suffer fools kindly, and this guy is beyond the pale,” Don Arias said, referring to Dr. Adam Hamawy, the Democratic nominee for Congress in New Jersey’s Democratic-leaning 12th Congressional District.
Arias, an Air Force veteran and former New York firefighter, saw firsthand the devastation caused by the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
His brother, who worked on the 84th floor of the South Tower, was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a defining tragedy that reshaped the course of American history.
Arias said he spoke with his brother, Adam, on the morning of the attacks, after the first plane had already crashed into the North Tower.
During that call, Adam described the chaos unfolding around him, including the sight of desperate victims leaping from the burning tower that had long been a fixture of the New York City skyline.
“So, that has stuck with me for many years,” Arias told Fox News Digital. In the years since, he has become an advocate for the families of those killed on 9/11.
Hamawy, a veteran combat plastic surgeon who now runs a private practice in New Jersey, won a crowded Democratic primary on June 2 to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman, D-N.J.
He emerged victorious despite heavy baggage, including ties to radical Islamic terrorism.
In his past, Hamawy cozied up to infamous terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman, better known as the “Blind Sheikh,” the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who died in federal prison in 2017.
The pair met in 1991, when Hamawy was a young adult, and soon thereafter Hamawy began accompanying Abdel-Rahman to mosques.
In the same year, Hamawy, the sheikh and others took a 13-hour car ride from Abdel-Rahman’s home in New Jersey to a conference in Detroit called “Towards a Global Islamic Economy.”
The congressional hopeful testified on behalf of the defense in the sheikh’s trial.
While Arias said it’s possible that Hamawy has some positive credentials — he is a doctor and a veteran — he doesn’t trust the candidate at all.
“But when he’s pals with the Blind Sheikh, and he’s his translator for several years, when he testifies for him in court saying what a great guy is, when he spends that kind of time with this guy, and then says that he’s never heard him say anything about jihad, I have to question his veracity. I mean, that just doesn’t ring true,” Arias told Fox New Digital.
ALSO READ: Video Captures Fiery Plane Crash on Highway as Aircraft Breaks in Two
“Show me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are,” he continued. “And if this guy Hamawy is going to try and forget all about that — he wants it to go down the memory hole and say, ‘oh, I was a veteran, you know, I did good stuff’ — I’m not going to forget, and I don’t think people should forget.“
In 1994, Hamawy also went on what he describes as a humanitarian mission to Bosnia. There, he worked with the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF). In a post-9/11 terrorism crackdown, BIF was designated as a financier of terrorism by the U.S. government over its ties to al Qaeda.
“We’re not educating the voters, and the voters aren’t doing the proper research into their candidates, because I think if they knew that this guy, if it was top of mind awareness that this guy had these kinds of connections… they wouldn’t vote for him, and I think people need to bring that to the forefront.”
Additionally, a socialist candidate who once suggested that the United States deserved 9/11 is likely to win a seat in the New York State Senate.
Aber Kawas is the Muslim daughter of illegal aliens who is now the Democratic nominee for the New York State Senate District 12. She was backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and won as part of a far-left sweep of several federal and state Democratic primaries in the city last Tuesday.
“The system of capitalism and racism and White supremacy… and Islamophobia have all been used to colonize lands, to take resources from other people and so this is a long trajectory, and we’re just seeing the manifestations of that continuation with 9/11,” she said in a 2017 episode of the Asian American Writers’ Association podcast titled “Islamophobia beyond 9/11 with Aber Kawas.”
“The idea we have to apologize for a terror attack that a couple of people did and then there is no apology or reparations for genocides and for slavery… is something I find reprehensible,” she said.
Arias condemned those comments, too.
“For her to minimize 9/11 … it’s just like, ‘oh, some people had some planes,’ you know, it’s beyond the pale,” he told Fox News Digital by phone. “So, when I look at somebody like Kawas, when I look at somebody like Mamdani, I don’t see an American. I mean, you scratch the surface, you see a commie, you see a radical, and — forgive me for saying it — I see a Nazi.”
He then blasted the American education system, which he views as a pipeline to far-left activism instead of actual learning. According to Arias, voters for candidates like Hamawy and Kawas are groomed in schools and in higher education to hold radical beliefs.
“It’s very insidious and it’s very seductive to the young and dumb,” he said. “It’s the young, it’s the dumb, it’s the indoctrinated who are voting for these people in numbers.”
“I don’t know what happens to a person where they actually grow to hate their own country, but I blame universities and the schools for this,” Arias continued. It’s an indictment on our education system because almost… they’re all very young, very ill informed and they’re Islamo-Nazis at this point.”
He added that for people like Kawas, Zionism, Judaism and Israel have been conflated with “white supremacy,” and in their minds, the alleged “white supremacy” has to be “put down.”
He also described socialism as a “luxury belief,” and its supporters as mostly young, wealthy or upper-middle-class people.
“These guys are cruising, so they can have these luxury beliefs, these ethereal conversations about mankind. They’re so out of touch.”
Hamawy’s campaign did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment. And Kawas declined to answer questions, instead pointing to her X account.
