- Adam Hamawy, a Democrat running for US Congress who opposes Iron Dome and volunteered in Gaza amid Israel-Hamas war, tells JTA that safety of Muslims and Jews is ‘intertwined’
JTA — Adam Hamawy, a staunch Israel critic, condemned antisemitism and accusations of dual loyalty days before he competes in the Democratic primary for a New Jersey congressional district on Tuesday.
“As a Muslim, I understand what it feels like to face bigotry, to feel unsafe in your community and to have your loyalty to this country questioned,” Hamawy said in a statement he sent to JTA on Wednesday. “In this country, we have seen recent attacks at both synagogues and mosques. I see our safety as intertwined.”
Hamawy, a plastic surgeon who served as a trauma surgeon in Gaza, is running in a crowded primary in Central New Jersey to succeed Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, who is retiring. Hamawy has distinguished himself from his competitors with his harsh anti-Israel stance, and surged to the top of the latest poll, conducted by Hamawy’s campaign, following a spending blitz on his behalf by pro-Palestinian super PAC American Priorities.
The political novice has also faced questions about his connections back in the early 1990s to Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” convicted on terrorism charges in 1995 linked to the World Trade Center bombing two years earlier and other plotted attacks.
A Hamawy spokesperson on Friday called the questions “gross and bigoted,” and said the attacks against him “are getting more desperate than ever.”
In his statement to JTA on Wednesday, Hamawy said that he finds antisemitism “abhorrent” and that he is “deeply worried about its continued rise.”
fundamentalist group Gamaa Islamiya, faces photographers and reporters during a news
conference in Jersey City on April 6, 1993.
Hamawy’s comments to JTA were his most extensive on antisemitism since he’s hit the campaign trail. Earlier in the race, amid an investigation into threatening letters that were sent to Jewish organizations in his deep-blue 12th district, Hamawy said he was “disgusted” by the messages. NJ-12 covers the state capital of Trenton, a number of suburban areas and the college town of Princeton.
“We are seeing an epidemic of hatred in this country against religious and ethnic minorities, and it must stop,” he wrote on X earlier in May about the threats.
If Hamawy wins the primary on Tuesday and the general election in November, he will be one of Congress’ sharpest Israel critics. He has called for an end to military aid to Israel, a complete arms embargo against the Jewish State and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Asked about Jewish constituents who disagree with his stance on Israel, Hamawy told JTA, “I hope we can still connect on shared values and goals, including peace, justice, safety and dignity.” He added that his door “will always be open.”
Hamawy also said that his Jewish staff, volunteers and supporters across the district “have made invaluable contributions to our campaign and Jewish voters are an important part of our coalition.”
However, he has drawn heat for his anti-Israel views. In an appearance last month on Hasan Piker’s show, he told Piker — a far-left streamer who’s been accused of antisemitic rhetoric — that he doesn’t support Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system because it is “insulating Israel” from “having to deal with the consequences of war.”
the Democratic primary for US Senate in Michigan, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
on Tuesday, April 7, 2026.
In response, Sue Altman, one of Hamawy’s challengers in the primary, told Jewish Insider, “We absolutely cannot and should not ever be cheerleading and wishing for the deaths of Israeli children.”
Piker is set to rally alongside Hamawy in Trenton, New Jersey, on Saturday.
Altman trails Hamawy, according to the race’s latest polling data, which was commissioned by Hamawy’s camp and collected in early May. According to the survey, Hamawy at 19% leads Altman, a former state director for Sen. Andy Kim, with 12% of the vote, and East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen, a vocal supporter of Israel, is in third with 11%.
The recent poll was conducted after American Priorities rallied behind him. The super PAC pledged to spend $10 million throughout this year’s midterm elections in hopes of installing pro-Palestinian candidates in Congress. To date, American Priorities has spent around $1.5 million of a promised $2 million promoting Hamawy. (As a super PAC, American Priorities makes independent expenditures, meaning it does not coordinate with the campaigns it is backing.)
Data collected from March 30 through April 4, before American Priorities’ ad blitz, had Hamawy in fourth place behind State Rep. Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, Altman and Cohen with just 5% of the vote.
Hamawy has recently come under fire from some of his opponents for his association in the early 1990s with Abdel Rahman, who was later convicted for terrorism following an investigation that grew out of his ties to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Hamawy’s yearslong association with Abdel Rahman included a visit to his home and a 13-hour drive together in 1991 to an Islamic economy conference in Detroit, according to the transcript of the Sheikh’s 1995 trial, for which Hamawy served as a witness for Abdel Rahman. Hamawy told the New Jersey Monitor this week that he testified out of a sense of “a civic duty,” and said he was “called as a witness, and I gave my testimony under oath, and then I walked out.”
New Jersey Representative Josh Gottheimer told Jewish Insider that he has “serious questions and deep concerns about [Hamawy’s] associations with terrorist organizations and leaders who have attacked America,” and that Hamawy “needs to answer these questions and explain himself to New Jersey voters.”
A Hamawy spokesperson told JTA that Abdel-Rahman had been “one of very few religious figures in what was then a very small Muslim community in New Jersey,” and that the candidate condemns Abdel-Rahman’s “violent rhetoric and actions” and had no contact with him after his arrest.
Hamawy is a former combat trauma surgeon and is credited with saving the life of Illinois Rep. and veteran Tammy Duckworth during the Iraq War. He has spoken at length about his experiences in Gaza in 2024 and 2025.
“This was not my first time in a combat zone,” Hamawy said on Piker’s show. “I’ve seen war. I was in Iraq, I was in Bosnia, which was another genocide. That was 20, 30 years ago.”
He added that what he saw in Gaza “was at another level altogether. You know, this was a genocide.”
Hamawy has received support from a slew of staunchly pro-Palestinian Democrats in Congress, including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ro Khanna, Delia Ramirez – who introduced the Block the Bombs to Israel Act – and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders.
On Tuesday, Chris Rabb, who recently won a congressional Democratic primary in Philadelphia, backed Hamawy. Hamawy has also been endorsed by former representative Jamaal Bowman, who lost his New York seat in a 2024 election where AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, spent $14.5 million opposing him.
Hamawy is also backed by anti-AIPAC groups PAL PAC and Track AIPAC, and other progressive organizations including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Sanders’ group Our Revolution. On Tuesday, the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace also endorsed Hamawy.
BY: Joseph Strauss
