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AMY GOODMAN : We begin today’s show in New Jersey, where Dr. Adam Hamawy beat a crowded field Tuesday to win the Democratic Party’s nomination in the race to succeed retiring Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman. Dr. Hamawy had the endorsement of progressives including Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Hamawy is a former U.S. Army surgeon. Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, who also endorsed Dr. Hamawy, said he helped save her life after her helicopter was shot down in Iraq, her legs blown off.
In 2024 and 2025, Dr. Adam Hamawy volunteered in Gaza, where he treated Palestinians injured there. In 2024, Hamawy spoke to Democracy Now! from Gaza.
DR. ADAM HAMAWY : Most of my patients are children. My average patient is about 12 or 13 years old. They range from — the youngest one I’ve taken care of is about 4. And the age goes up to like mid-sixties or seventies. The people — since the invasion of Rafah, we’ve had a lot of the hospital personnel leave, because they are trying to get their families out of Rafah. Many of them have either moved there from other parts of Gaza, or they have, you know, lived there and are trying to flee.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Dr. Adam Hamawy speaking from Gaza back in 2024.
On the campaign trail, Dr. Hamawy called for the U.S. to cut off arms sales to Israel and other countries that commit gross human rights violations. He also called for an end to apartheid in Israel.
This is Dr. Hamawy on Tuesday night after winning the Democratic congressional primary in New Jersey.
DR. ADAM HAMAWY : We have proved once and for all that there is no such thing as “progressive except for Palestine.” … I will fight for healthcare, not bombs, to abolish ICE and to unrig this economy once and for all.
AMY GOODMAN : Dr. Adam Hamawy joins us now from Princeton, New Jersey.
Congratulations on your victory Tuesday. Can you talk about, overall, your plank and what this means and what your victory says not only to the country, but to the Democratic Party, in particular?
DR. ADAM HAMAWY : Thank you very much for having me again.
Yes, I am — you know, I’m very happy about Tuesday. And I was running on something very simple, is that we should be spending on healthcare, not bombs. We should be spending on our communities here, you know, in New Jersey, in America, and not funding bombs overseas for, you know, atrocities and genocide. We should not be funding the endless wars that we’re seeing. We shouldn’t be funding ICE .
And this was a message that people wanted to hear, that people were waiting to hear, because we see the problems that we have at home that we are ignoring. You just went through your War and Peace Report, and we see that, you know, we need the billions of dollars that are being spent on these endless wars to fix our communities and to restore the democracy that seems to be being dismantled right in front of us.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dr. Hamawy, what prompted you to move from being on the frontlines of medical treatment in many wars around the world to run for office?
DR. ADAM HAMAWY : So, I’ve been working in war and disaster zones for the last 30 years. I volunteered, you know, two weeks a year, or sometimes longer, and then I’d come back feeling that I have given back. And I couldn’t do that after coming back from Gaza. I just couldn’t go back to life as usual, because what I witnessed there wasn’t a war. I witnessed a level of destruction I had never experienced before. What I witnessed was really a genocide. I was taking care of the victims of it, and I couldn’t stay silent. And with the restriction on foreign journalists from entering, I had a front-seat view, and I felt that I had to go to my lawmakers and say, “We are allowing, we are enabling this to happen as a country. We are using American tax dollars for this to happen.” And I started advocating and going to D.C., and I found that many doors were closed. People didn’t even want to hear what was happening. They wouldn’t even listen, whether they agreed or not.
And so, when this seat became open, when Bonnie Watson Coleman, our current congresswoman, said she was going to retire, I felt I had to run. I had to continue her legacy of fighting for the people, fighting for justice, and having the moral courage to stand up and make sure that we continue this fight. And, you know, as a surgeon, I don’t like just putting Band-Aids on issues; I go to the source. And currently many of the problems that we have here at home — with healthcare, with education, with our infrastructure, with housing — starts in Washington, and these endless wars start in Washington. So, this is where I’m going.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And yet, you’re running as the Democratic Party nominee, and the Democratic Party, when — especially when it comes to Gaza, to Palestinians and Israel, has really pretty much gone along with the imperial project of the United States an…
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