Outspoken Israel Critic Wins New Jersey Democratic Primary
The US Army veteran and outspoken critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza won a Democratic Party primary on Tuesday, putting him on a near certain path to Congress.
Adam Hamawy’s victory makes him the clear favorite to succeed Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, who is retiring after a decade in Congress.
Hamawy, a plastic surgeon and former Army combat doctor during the Iraq War, defeated his nearest rival, Brad Cohen. With about 93% of ballots counted, Hamawy got a plurality of the vote – 28.1% – compared with Cohen’s 14.9%, according to The Associated Press.
In November, Hamawy is expected to face Republican Gregg Mele, a perennial candidate in a district where Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans.
“You’ve heard throughout this race that I said over and over again: health care, not bombs; to abolish ICE; and to unrig this economy,” Hamawy told supporters in Princeton, according to The New York Times, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose aggressive goals and tactics under US President Donald Trump’s second term have drawn widespread opposition.
“They are solutions to a crisis that was born out of a broken and rigged political and economic system — a system that floods money overseas to bomb children’s schools, while at the same time says that child care here in America is pie in the sky,” he added, alluding to a US attack on an Iranian girls’ school this February which killed some 160 students.
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Hamawy, 56, a first-time candidate, runs a cosmetic surgery practice in Princeton. He said he entered the race after feeling ignored by Washington lawmakers when he tried to raise concerns about the devastation he witnessed during a 2024 humanitarian mission to a hospital in southern Gaza, amid an Israeli genocide.
“I could only define it as a genocide, because I saw the bodies of the people that came in,” he said after the visit.
“And it wasn’t an accident. You can’t have an accident, every single day for three years," The Guardian quoted him as saying.
“When the hospital shakes and I see the bodies come in, I’m paying for it with my tax dollars,” he said. “I don’t want my tax dollars doing that.”
Last March, he attended Trump’s joint address to Congress as Watson Coleman’s guest. Although Watson Coleman did not endorse anyone in the 12-person primary, she praised Hamawy, an Egyptian-born father of four, for his “selflessness and bravery” and his ability to “speak with unimpeachable authority on the suffering of the Palestinian people.”
Hamawy also supports universal Medicare coverage, abolishing ICE, ending US military aid to Israel, and has described Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide.
Source: Anadolu Agency
