WASHINGTON — Adam Hamawy, the newly chosen Democratic candidate for New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, once spent a month at a hospital in Gaza. He described his experience there as “completely benign” just months before Israeli forces discovered a tunnel network leading to a Hamas leader.
Hamawy, who was born in Egypt and previously served as a combat surgeon, volunteered at Gaza’s European Hospital for several weeks in May 2024. He later defended the facility against allegations that it was a base for Hamas operations.
“During my three weeks at the European Hospital, I did not encounter any weapons. There were no rifles, pistols, or grenade launchers. It was entirely a civilian hospital with no tunnels beneath it,” he stated in an interview with Jacobin Magazine in August 2024.
While there are lingering concerns about Hamawy’s possible connections to individuals or groups linked to terrorism, no evidence has surfaced to suggest his personal involvement in such activities.
Hamawy has an impressive military background, having served as a surgeon for the US during the Iraq War. His service earned him commendations, and Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) credited him with saving her life after her helicopter was shot down.
Throughout his campaign, Hamawy has consistently maintained that the hospital in Gaza was purely a civilian facility, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
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 Colemanâs (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 âBenevolence 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 foundationâs operation in Bosnia part of an âimpressive array of offices [that] covertly provided financial and other support for terrorist activitiesâ that Osama bin Laden relied on in the 1990s.
Agents later found a photo of bin Laden, documents about the terror groupâs operations, weapons, letters from the terror group’s leaders, and more during the raid. Jewish Insider first reported on Hamawyâs history with the foundation.
âDr. 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,â his spokesperson told The Post.
âThe 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 werenât so gross and bigoted.â
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 âThe Blind Sheik.â
Abdel-Rahman died in 2017.
“The Blind Sheik” was convicted in the mid-1990s for championing a âwar of urban terrorismâ 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 âconquering 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.
