There are two towers in Old Bridge Plaza that are far shorter than the ones they memorialize, but taller than any man, and around them are the names of a dozen victims of the Islamic terror attacks of September 11. East Brunswick has its own two towers standing tall in the center of a garden and wrapped in the flag with eight names carved around them. In Monroe, there are two flags and nine names, and in Plainsboro there are two benches and four plaques, and over in Cranbury, there is a post office named after Todd Beamer who said “Let’s Roll” on Flight 93.
New Jersey, almost more than any other state, is dotted with memorials to the victims of the two Muslim terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in nearby Manhattan, the initial attempt in 1993 and the successful attack in 2001.
Now New Jersey’s 12th congressional district, stretching from Plainfield, less than an hour away from Ground Zero, to the state capital in Trenton, may elect the translator for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, widely known as the ‘Blind Sheikh’, the Islamic terror leader at the center of the original attack and a follow-up plan to attack the Statue of Liberty, to Congress.
In April, Freedom Center Investigates broke the story that Hisham ‘Adam’ Hamawy, an Egyptian Muslim plastic surgeon running for Congress, had testified for the defense at the Blind Sheikh’s terror trial. Our reporting demonstrated that Hamawy had been part of an entourage driven to a terror-ridden convention for a top Islamic terrorist figure who inspired Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Even while running for Congress, Hamawy has still failed to directly condemn his terror sheikh who was such a crucial figure in the Islamic terrorism world that ISIS had urged kidnapping Americans to hold them hostage in exchange for his release.
Other media outlets, notably the Free Beacon and FOX News, picked up the story and did more digging to discover that Hamawy had enjoyed an even closer relationship with the terror leader and helped him with translations. Rahman’s other translator, Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, had confessed at the trial that Rahman had directed him to bomb the George Washington Bridge and other landmarks. At the trial, Hamawy however had been brought in to deny a government informant’s claim that the Blind Sheikh had called for terror attacks, but was forced to admit that he had called for Jihad and “conquering the land of the infidels”.
I reached out to Hamawy and asked him if he had any relationship with Ali, but once again the campaign responded by stonewalling me and fearfully refusing to provide any response.
And yet the congressional candidate was so close to the terror leader that he appeared as Rahman’s translator at a press conference denying his role in the terror attack.
“Two months after six people died in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the infamous ‘Blind Sheikh,’ held a news conference at his Jersey City, N.J., home to deny his guilt. Standing with him that day was a young medical student from New Jersey who had followed the sheikh’s teachings, traveled with him, and had graciously agreed to translate the sheikh’s press release from Arabic to English. The young man was Adam Hamawy, now considered a front-runner in the crowded Democratic primary race,” Tom Moran reported at the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Hamawy claimed that the Blind Sheikh “was a leader of the community” and taught “how to practice as a normal Muslim.” A few years after Hamawy had testified for the terror sheikh, Osama bin Laden had held a press conference featuring two of Rahman’s sons who handed out cards with their father’s picture and his Islamic call to attack America. “A fatwa of the captive Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman … To all Muslims everywhere: Destroy their countries. Tear them to pieces. Destroy their economies, burn their corporations, destroy their businesses, sink their ships, and bring down their airplanes. Kill them in the sea, on land, and in the air.”
Several years later, the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda.
As the revelations about the well-financed candidate, who is backed by $2 million from an Islamic PAC, continue to emerge, Hamawy has claimed innocence and blamed everything on ‘Islamophobia’. An official response from the Hamawy campaign argued that “the initial story was written in FrontPage Magazine, a website affiliated with the anti-Islam David Horowitz Freedom Center, and called it ‘guilt-by-association attacks on Muslim and Arab candidates”.
“As a Muslim, they’re always going to find something to attack,” he had protested to reporters.
But families of the victims in the district that the terror sheikh’s translator wants to represent aren’t buying it.
Of the six victims of the original World Trade Center attack by Rahman’s followers, only William ‘Bill’ Macko, a former Marine, had lived in New Jersey. The assistant chief mechanical supervisor had been killed when the bomb went off and granite from the memorial set up after the attacks (and destroyed on 9/11) was used to build a granite cross for Macko’s family.
Michael Macko, his son, told the Free Beacon, “I would never vote for Hamawy because of this and again, saying that as a lifelong Democrat and someone who really wants to keep New Jersey blue, I would find another Democrat to vote for even if it meant writing in someone. I could not with a clear conscience ever vote for this man. Nor would I encourage anybody else to. Some things are just not forgivable.”
Tom Moran, a former Newark Star Ledger editor, also questioned what was happening. “Getting some flack on this from progressives who are not concerned about his long-ago flirtation with the sheikh. But curious how folks feel about the core question I ask here: What if a candidate had precisely this history with a leader of the KKK? If a candidate followed that KKK leader around, traveled with him, stood with him after he was suspected of murdering black people and helped him write a press release denying his guilt? I think the left would throw that candidate overboard. And the support Hamawy is getting, I fear, gives ammo to critics who say Democrats are not standing up to antisemitism with enough vigor.”
Or to Islamic terrorism.
In Windsor, where Hisham ‘Adam’ Hamawy has his plastic surgery office (which has been the subject of multiple accusations by American patients, complaining that the Egyptian surgeon had left them with disfiguring scars and burns), there is a homemade bridge, two reflecting pools and seven names of those who were lost when the terrorists struck the World Trade Center six years after the candidate testified on behalf of the terror leader at the center of the original attack.
The ‘Blind Sheikh’ had been the key theological figure for Egyptian Islamic Jihad which made up a core of Al Qaeda. ISIS had called for kidnapping Americans to secure his release. His followers joined Al Qaeda and went on killing Americans in his name. Including on 9/11.
“We Will Never Forget,” the West Windsor police department posted last year on the anniversary of the attacks. Hamawy’s campaign is testing whether that’s really so with $2 million in funding from a Muslim PAC misleadingly named ‘American Priorities PAC’ backed by Islamic tech cash that had previously funded Zohran Mamdani in New York City.
Will the 9/11 memorials and the promises that New Jersey, from Monroe to Old Bridge, would not forget its fallen or $2 million in Islamic cash from Silicon Valley prevail?
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.
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Read my book ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left’ to discover the true origins of the American Left.
These citizens of NJ that want to keep NJ blue are part of the problem. It is the Democrats that have destroyed a once great state. I grew up in NJ when it was a RED state and it was a great place to grow up. It is now nothing but a progressive he!! hole that robs it citizens blind and not only financially but robs the people GOD given rights supposedly protected by the Constitution the criminals running that state swear to defend and protect. BUT the biggest problem of all is the brainwashed, brain dead people that keep voting for criminals.
The “Blind Shiek’s” immigration lawyer is now an Immigration Judge. You can’t make this stuff up!