New Jersey Democrat Adam Hamawy, the longtime associate of the notorious "Blind Sheikh" terrorist mastermind who will soon represent the state's 12th Congressional District, refused to call Iran a U.S. adversary, saying, "We pushed them into a fight."
During a Tuesday appearance on CNN's The Situation Room, host Pamela Brown asked Hamawy if he "see[s] Iran as the adversary."
"I see—we pushed them into a fight, and so I think we both have to step back and say, 'Is this helping either one of us?'" Hamawy said. "But are they the adversary?" Brown asked. "We're making adversaries when we should be making friends," said Hamawy. "They've been saying 'death to America' for decades," Brown responded. "We've been saying 'death to Iran' for decades, as well," Hamawy said.
When Brown noted that Iran has "killed a lot of Americans," Hamawy responded, "We've killed a lot of them, as well." He went on to argue that the United States should use its "economic" power "to create friends in the region." Iran has killed and kidnapped more than 1,000 Americans since 1979.
Hamawy's remarks reflect the radical nature of the freshman class of House Democrats.
Hamawy, a Princeton, N.J., plastic surgeon who once worked in a hospital Hamas operated out of in Gaza, won his deep-blue district by nearly 50 points last week after defeating nine other Democrats in his tighter June primary race. Hamawy faced scrutiny for his close ties to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Omar Abdel-Rahman, better-known as the Blind Sheikh. Hamawy served as a defense witness at the 1995 trial that saw the Islamic cleric put away for life and acknowledged that he heard Abdel-Rahman speak of "conquering the land of the infidels" and of "jihad." Hamawy argued during his primary campaign that Abdel-Rahman was actually a "community leader."
"He was a leader of the community that talks about how to pray, how to wash, how to practice as a normal Muslim," Hamawy said in May. "He wasn't preaching death and destruction all the time," Hamawy said. The mosque Abdel-Rahman preached at, described as a "jihad office" in court records, was where the bombing conspirators met. Hamawy said the Blind Sheikh "always" talked about jihad, but refused to condemn his longtime mentor.
Joining Hamawy in the House are a crop of far-left Democrats, many of whom are associated with the Democratic Socialists of America. They include Colorado's Melat Kiros, who said the Sept. 11 terrorist attack was the "inevitable" result of America's colonial aggression; Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Columbia University graduate student who helped found the far-left campus group behind disruptive anti-Israel protests; and Pennsylvania's Chris Rabb, who praised a notorious cop-killer and called for the mass execution of corporate CEOs.
Hamawy is not the only newly elected Democrat to downplay Iranian terrorism. Michigan senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed drew an equivalency between Iran and Israel during an October debate, saying: "I think both of them have proven dangerous in their own way."
