Adam Hamawy’s past relationship with terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman has loomed over his rapid rise in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ). 

Their relationship spanned a 1991 road trip the two took together to Detroit, Hamawy’s service as the sheikh’s translator for a press conference in which Abdel-Rahman denied any role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Hamawy’s testimony on the sheikh’s behalf at his 1995 trial, where the Islamist leader was convicted of plotting to carry out a campaign of terrorist attacks in New York City.

But just one year before Hamawy took the witness stand to describe his travels with Abdel-Rahman, the now-Congressional candidate made a different journey with another party entangled in terrorist conspiracies: to Bosnia, with a group subsequently shut down for providing “logistical support” to Al-Qaida.

In a 1996 interview with the Newark Star-Ledger, according to a copy Jewish Insider recovered through an archive of print publications, Hamawy described volunteering in Bosnia during the summer of 1994 with a Chicago-based nonprofit called the “Benevolence International Foundation.”

“I worked in Sarajevo for 10 days and then the rest in Zenica, a large regional center in central Bosnia,” Hamawy, who had just graduated from medical school, told the paper about the five weeks he spent with the organization. “We went out to hospitals around the area and in the mountains to check what supplies they needed and we tried to deliver them.”

Sarajevo and Zenica were the exact cities where Benevolence International maintained its offices — offices that Bosnian authorities raided in 2002, part of a joint effort with U.S. authorities to dismantle the group, which they had identified as a front for Al-Qaida. The 9/11 Commission Report would later identify the foundation’s base in the Bosnian capital as part of the “impressive array of offices [that] covertly provided financial and other support for terrorist activities” that Osama bin Laden established in the early 1990s.

Hamawy, who has scored endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) in his New Jersey congressional bid, did not respond to repeated questions about his relationship with Benevolence International and his contacts and activities in Bosnia.

The plastic surgeon has emerged as a frontrunner in the congressional race despite his relationship with the “Blind Sheikh” receiving significant coverage in recent weeks. A 1995 court transcript shows how the then-medical student Hamawy described meeting the Islamist leader in 1991, visiting him at his home and accompanying him on a 13-hour van trip to a conference in Detroit. In the courtroom, he and the sheikh greeted each other warmly, and Hamawy denied a government informant’s claim that Abdel-Rahman had urged the assassination of the then-president of Egypt.

But no other publication has reported Hamawy’s connection to Benevolence International since the Star-Ledger interview in 1996.

According to evidence federal prosecutors proffered in court, and the affidavits of federal agents, the 2002 raids on the Bosnian offices recovered weapons; correspondence between the group’s chief executive, Enaam Arnaout, and bin Laden from the 1980s and 1990s; letters from other Al-Qaida leaders on battles and financial transactions; a photo of Arnaout and bin Laden together; an organizational chart of Al-Qaida; a handwritten list of top donors to the terror organization; copies of never-before-seen documents concerning Al-Qaida’s 1988 founding and its admission policies; and details regarding training camps and Al-Qaida operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan.

According to Marko Atila Hoare, a political science professor and historian at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, the early 1990s saw a global mobilization of Muslims to aid their co-religionists in the Balkans. Facing a Serbian onslaught, the embattled Bosnian government accepted this support, even though the involvement of foreign Islamic militants would later cause frustration and embarrassment for authorities there.

“A lot of them wanted to go and defend Muslims from non-Muslims persecuting them,” Hoare said, noting that the chaos of war allowed many groups to operate with little scrutiny from officials or the outside world. “You had these organizations like Benevolence, like the Third World Relief Agency, which were operating in this chaotic situation, and some of them were absolute fronts for radical Islamists, and others were ordinary charities. But in these ordinary charities you could also have radicals or extremists infiltrating them.”

Hoare said that not every volunteer who came to the country, even with Benevolence International, was “a hardcore jihadist with terrorist intent.” But among those who took up this “cause celebre in the Muslim world,” as he called it, was Al-Qaida. 

The federal evidence file in the case against Benevolence International and Arnaout described how the terror organization deployed a representative to the Balkans in late 1992 on a fact-finding mission for bin Laden, part of a plan “to establish a base for operations in Europe against al Qaeda’s true enemy, the United States.” The materials assert that senior Al-Qaida officials credited Benevolence International with obtaining funds and weapons for the jihadist group, as well as with helping Al-Qaida secure arms for Bosnian militants.

By the time Hamawy arrived, the Syrian-born Arnaout had already been arrested in Croatia on suspicions of weapons smuggling, according to a 2002 handbook from the Austrian National Defence Academy — and then “apparently managed to escape from prison” and continued “forming and supervising the Training Centres” near Zenica (An attorney for Arnaout called this account of his client’s activities “unsupported,” and asserted he lacked the “practical military experience” to carry them out.) 

The area near Zenica was where Hamawy reported working in 1994. It was also where the Bosnian Army had recently set up its “El Mujahedin” unit, for foreign fighters who had poured into the warzone, according to the European Court of Human Rights. And among the organizations providing the unit with “funds and assistance,” the court found, was the Benevolence International Foundation.

According to the testimony of FBI agent Robert Walker, Benevolence International was originally the creation of Saudi Sheikh Adel Abdul Jalil Batterjee, a since-sanctioned Al-Qaida financier. The group, Walker attested, operated in tandem with the terror group across multiple nations, providing it with “logistical support.”

“BIF was used in the early 1990s by Usama Bin Laden as a means to transfer money to bank accounts, generally held by purported relief organizations, in countries where al Qaeda members or associates were conducting operations,” the Walker affidavit, which cites multiple confidential informants, reads. “Arnaout was an administrator for Usama Bin Laden who disbursed funds at times on behalf of Bin Laden.”

Arnaout incorporated the Benevolence International branch in the United States in 1992 and served as its chief executive. In 1994, the year Hamawy volunteered with the group, its leadership included Mohamed Loay Bayazid, an alleged Al-Qaida co-founder who sought to secure weapons-grade uranium for the terrorist group. In December of that year, Bayazid was arrested in San Francisco in the company of bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Al-Qaida lieutenant Mohammed Jamal Khalifa.

Walker’s informants also described Arnaout as a “close associate” of Afghan militant commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the Bosnian office raid turned up video footage of the two men together. The FBI affidavit in turn linked Hekmatyar to Hamawy’s associate and travel companion, the Blind Sheikh Abdel-Rahman — another ally of bin Laden, who also allegedly encouraged his followers to wage jihad in Bosnia.

In 1996, Hamawy told the Star-Ledger he had gotten in contact with Benevolence International through the “Bosnian mission to the United States,” and made no mention of the then-freshly convicted Abdel-Rahman. The article also said his work in Bosnia had occurred “under the auspices of the United Nations High Command for Refugees.” No U.N. agency of this name exists, although there is a High Commission for Refugees, which was unable to confirm that it worked with Benevolence International in Bosnia. Hoare, the historian in Sarajevo, described the U.N.’s work in the country during the war as “corrupted” by local interests and actors, many with ill intent.

Records show that in 1994, the counselor and second deputy ambassador at the Bosnian mission in New York was a New Jersey native named Saffet Catovic. In December 2001, the time of the first federal raids upon Benevolence International’s offices outside Chicago, Catovic was widely quoted as the foundation’s spokesman.

“[The collapsing Bosnian state was] forming these missions in different countries on an ad hoc basis, with what they had, the people they had,” said Hoare, who did not speak directly to Catovic’s case. “It was a very sort of chaotic, ad hoc situation where it was very easy for people to infiltrate missions.”

An imam, Catovic has remained prominent in New Jersey politics and religious affairs, and last fall hosted Hamawy on a YouTube panel discussion of the Gaza conflict. Members of Catovic’s family have donated to Hamawy’s congressional campaign, Federal Election Commission records show.

Catovic did not respond to repeated questions about his contact with Hamawy during his time in the Bosnian mission. Hamawy and his campaign similarly did not answer whether Catovic provided any referral for his work with Benevolence International, or whether the Blind Sheikh had ever referenced the Bosnian conflict in his presence.

Arnaout ultimately pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge in 2003, admitting he had raised money for purported humanitarian purposes and funneled it to the Bosnian military. The Justice Department dropped its terrorism charges, and the judge in the case criticized some of the evidence federal authorities presented as overly reliant on personal associations. 

However, the same judge ruled in the Justice Department’s favor in 2019 when it moved to strip Arnaout of his U.S. naturalization status. The prosecutors cited — among other factors — Ernaout’s employment at Benevolence International and the group’s links to Al-Qaida. 

In his defense at his denaturalization trial, Arnaout admitted having been “an acquaintance” of bin Laden and Hekmatyar, but continued to deny any ties to terrorist activity. His attorney underscored that the criminal terrorism allegations against him “were never proven.” He entered a settlement agreement with the federal government that remains under seal.

The U.S. Treasury Department and the United Nations Security Council continue to include Benevolence International on their lists of entities sanctioned for terrorist connections, although the group has long since ceased operations. The foundation has been the target of numerous civil lawsuits from parties harmed on 9/11.

On the campaign trail, Hamawy has stressed another part of his volunteer record: his eight years as a U.S. Army officer during the Global War on Terror, which saw him work in a host of military hospitals, including one in Baghdad.

He has referenced his time in Bosnia only glancingly, gently correcting a Turkish state TV interviewer that his work in the Balkans was not through the Army but “another volunteer mission.” He did not mention Benevolence International by name.

He also told a local New Jersey station, “I was in Bosnia early on in ‘95” — which, if accurate, would mean he either spent more time in the country than he acknowledged in the 1996 Star-Ledger interview, or was there during a different period than he described to the newspaper.

But what has given the plastic surgeon such recent prominence has been his volunteer work in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s war with Hamas, including at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. The IDF struck the hospital repeatedly in 2025 to take out an underground Hamas command center that it said operated beneath the medical center.

In multiple interviews in far-left media, Hamawy has denied the existence of such a terrorist post, and insisted to Jacobin that the facility was “a completely benign civilian hospital with no tunnels underneath it.”

The IDF has contradicted his account with footage of subterranean passages, including where it reported recovering the body of Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar. Hamas subsequently confirmed the killing.

Trayon White, a member of the Washington, D.C. Council with a history of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, was expelled from the Council last year as he faced federal bribery charges before being voted back in months later. 

Now, weeks before a heavily contested mayoral election in Washington, White is hitting the campaign trail with Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, a leading Democratic mayoral candidate who voted with the rest of her colleagues on the Council to expel White.

“We don’t agree on everything, but we agree on most things,” White said at a weekend event with Lewis George, video of which was shared on social media. He encouraged his supporters to vote for her in the Democratic primary on June 16, which will all but decide the election in the heavily blue city.

Lewis George spoke highly of White in her speech, saying that when she first joined the Council in 2021, White offered to mentor her.

“You’re somebody who deserves to be shown love for the love that you give to everybody else,” Lewis George said at a weekend event with White. “D.C. loves you. I love you.” 

White posted a video on his Facebook page in 2018 attributing a recent snowstorm to “the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters” and made similar comments at a municipal planning meeting, prompting an uproar from fellow councilmembers and the local Jewish community.

He said that he did not know that such language about the Rothschilds was an antisemitic conspiracy theory, and he attempted to make amends with the Jewish community by attending a Passover Seder, meeting with community leaders for bagels and going on a tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. But White left the museum tour early, without explanation, driving further criticism. 

Soon after, it also came to light that White donated $500 from a local fund, earmarked for Ward 8 constituents, to an event in Illinois featuring the antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. 

White was arrested in 2024 for allegedly taking more than $150,000 in bribes in order to boost certain companies in their bid for city contracts. On Monday, a federal judge denied his request to dismiss the case, which is set to go to trial in September. 

A spokesperson for Lewis George did not respond to a request for comment.

Lewis George has had her own dust-ups with the Washington Jewish community in the course of the mayoral race this year. She responded in the affirmative to an endorsement questionnaire from the Democratic Socialists of America’s Metro DC chapter that asked local candidates to reject the “Zionist lobby,” and vowed to avoid events that “promote Zionism.” Lewis George, herself a DSA member, earned the group’s backing. 

In a meeting with local rabbis, Lewis George privately apologized for her answers to the questionnaire, but did not say the same publicly. 

The open race for mayor of Washington, D.C., has been largely uneventful ahead of next month’s primary — so much so that the first TV ads run by the leading candidates, Kenyan McDuffie and Janeese Lewis George, sound nearly identical. Both candidates tout affordability and safety on the campaign trail, with promises to build more housing and stand up against President Donald Trump. 

But if elected, Lewis George’s victory would mark a significant shift away from the centrist brand of politics espoused by outgoing Mayor Muriel Bowser over the last 12 years, and would instead hand a major win to Washington’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter, of which Lewis George has been a member for years. 

Lewis George has faced criticism throughout the campaign from some in the Jewish community for comments she made on a DSA endorsement questionnaire pledging to boycott events that “promote Zionism” and criticizing Jewish activists’ approach to combating antisemitism. Ron Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, on Tuesday called DSA an “evil” organization that seeks “to make being Jewish unacceptable in polite society.” 

DSA has activated its small but growing membership to knock on doors for Lewis George, a member of the D.C. Council, tapping into a grassroots energy that they hope translates into success at the ballot box. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of two DSA members currently serving in Congress, attended a recent DC DSA rally alongside Lewis George. 

DSA’s Metro DC chapter is relatively small. Yet its current roster of roughly 3,400 members represents a massive increase from its pre-2016 nadir of just 200 members — and mirrors DSA’s growing clout nationally. 

“For most of the ‘80s and ‘90s and 2000s, DSA was a small organization with maybe 5,000 or 8,000 people at the most. I would say the average age was probably over 60, maybe higher than that,” said Peter Dreier, an emeritus professor of politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles. “Then Bernie [Sanders] ran for president in 2016 and started talking about democratic socialism in a way that made sense to, particularly, a lot of young people, and he kind of opened the door to people to be in DSA.” 

Overall, DSA is still a small organization on the fringes of Democratic politics. Even the highest membership counts — adding up DSA’s local chapters — don’t top 100,000. But the unexpected popularity of Sanders’ 2016 presidential run sparked a resurgence of interest in democratic socialism not seen in generations, and that has continued well past his two campaigns. A 2025 Gallup poll found that 42% of Democrats have a positive image of capitalism, down from 54% a decade ago, while 66% have a positive view of socialism.  

“If [young people] don’t remember the Cold War, then what do they think when they hear the word socialism? There’s still a battle over that, but they’re more likely to think, ‘Oh, countries that have more equality, or students that get free or almost free higher education, everybody has access to healthcare,’” said Dreier. 

“We are going to raise money and develop a plan over the course of the next few months to try to make them toxic, to make it unacceptable for major figures in the party or anybody actually running for office to be affiliated with the DSA, the way it should be unacceptable to be affiliated with [neo-Nazi influencer] Nick Fuentes if you’re running as Republican,” Third Way’s senior vice president for public affairs, Matt Bennett, said. 

The key question now facing capital-D Democrats — one they sound unsure of how to answer, or perhaps unwilling — is how to handle an insurgent faction that has galvanized people over its straightforward messaging on corporations (bad), taxing the rich (good) and Medicare for All (necessary), while at the same time promoting far-left positions like prison and police abolition that are nowhere near the Democratic mainstream. The group has long promoted the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, as well as calling for an arms embargo on Israel, and its members passed a resolution last year affirming their commitment to anti-Zionism. On Oct. 7, 2023, DSA released a statement holding Israel accountable for the Hamas attacks and calling on members to take to the streets to protest U.S. support for Israel. 

The centrist Democratic group Third Way plans to launch a major PR campaign against DSA in the coming months, one of the group’s executives told JI, arguing that its far-left positions and incendiary brand of politics will be harmful for the party’s electoral prospects. 

“We are going to raise money and develop a plan over the course of the next few months to try to make them toxic, to make it unacceptable for major figures in the party or anybody actually running for office to be affiliated with the DSA, the way it should be unacceptable to be affiliated with [neo-Nazi influencer] Nick Fuentes if you’re running as Republican,” Third Way’s senior vice president for public affairs, Matt Bennett, said. 

In the decade since Sanders’ 2016 campaign, DSA has had an outsized impact on national politics. The 2018 congressional victory of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a DSA member, raised the group’s profile. A steady stream of more than 200 DSA-aligned candidates have been elected to state and local offices since, culminating with the election of DSA member Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City last year. 

“To the degree that people need to pay attention to DSA, it’s because they built this kind of political machine,” said Micah Sifry, a journalist focused on left-wing political organizing. “In a time when people are, for the most part, not very organized, the ability of any small group, relatively speaking, to punch above its weight grows.” 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, New York has the largest bench of DSA-affiliated state lawmakers. The group has slowly but steadily been gaining electoral power in state and local offices in some unexpected places, too, like Minnesota, Colorado, Delaware and Wisconsin. The group’s largest foothold is in city council races, where a small but committed cadre of volunteers can swing elections in low-turnout races. 

National Democratic leaders are divided about how to treat the small but vocal socialist minority in the party. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) declined to support Mamdani in the primary election but ultimately endorsed him ahead of the general election last year. Weeks later, Jeffries voted in favor of a Republican-led resolution condemning socialism. He has been skeptical of the left-wing ideology throughout his political career: “There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism,” he said in 2021. A spokesperson for Jeffries declined to comment this week when asked if he believes Democrats should be welcoming socialists into the party. 

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin has been more open-minded about socialists. Asked by Fox News last year whether progressives like Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez make his job harder, he said no. 

“The party is a big tent. But just like we have to believe it’s a big tent, the DSA also has to believe it’s a big tent, and I’m not sure they do,” Brian Romick, CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel, said. “Democratic leaders want to win elections, and that means a big tent, and that means that Democratic base voters and pro-Israel voters and moderate people who maybe voted for [Donald] Trump sometimes because they’re concerned about prices have to be in the tent.” 

“I don’t think they make it difficult at all,” Martin said in August 2025. “The difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is that we’re a big tent. We have lots of people in that tent from all of the different ideological wings, from conservative Democrats, to centrists, to progressives, to these new leftists.” A DNC spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment this week.

Brian Romick, CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel, told Jewish Insider this week that he is concerned about the inroads DSA is making in the party. He agreed with Martin that the Democratic Party should be a big tent, but noted that DSA members — who are at times intent on putting litmus tests even on would-be allies — don’t extend the same understanding to more moderate members of the party.

“The party is a big tent. But just like we have to believe it’s a big tent, the DSA also has to believe it’s a big tent, and I’m not sure they do,” Romick said. “Democratic leaders want to win elections, and that means a big tent, and that means that Democratic base voters and pro-Israel voters and moderate people who maybe voted for [Donald] Trump sometimes because they’re concerned about prices have to be in the tent.” 

The questionnaire Lewis George filled out in Washington to earn DSA’s endorsement reveals how important hard-line opposition to Israel is to the organization, which requires even candidates for local offices with no connection to foreign policy to all but disavow the Jewish state. Most voters who support DSA-aligned candidates likely are not drawn to them because of their views on the Middle East; Mamdani’s message was first and foremost about affordability. But DSA’s growing reach among Democrats gave a foothold to anti-Israel views that may have once been rare, though global attention on the war in Gaza also contributed to shifting Democratic orthodoxy on the conflict. (Other far-left groups like Justice Democrats have played a role, too.)

Zach Shartiag, a Jewish Democratic campaign operative from Chicago, told JI that Democrats he has talked to who support DSA candidates generally do not do so because of DSA’s stance on Israel, even if the activists are themselves critical of Israel.   

“People might be very anti-Israel now, but at the same time, it’s like, what does that have to do with local politics?” said Shartiag, who is currently working on a congressional campaign in Hawaii. “I’ve talked to a lot of people, just in general, normal humans, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, I might be against what Israel’s doing, but what does that have to do with the local and the city and the state?’” 

The full picture of DSA’s influence in the party will not be known until all the votes are tallied at the end of this year’s midterm elections. A number of DSA-affiliated candidates are gaining ground in congressional primaries, such as Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, who has garnered progressive endorsements in a Philadelphia-area open seat, and New York state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who has Mamdani’s backing for her congressional campaign. 

Still, the election outcomes in states across the country this year will present only a partial picture of where the Democratic Party is moving. In the same year that Mamdani won in New York City, for instance, Democratic moderates Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. 

The only certainty, then, is that the battle between centrists and socialists will continue into 2028. 

“I think you’re going to have a real mixed verdict, with us yelling about our side and the left yelling about their side,” Third Way’s Bennett acknowledged. “So what that means is, unsurprisingly, we’re going to go into the presidential primary season with the two camps demanding that they are right.” 

Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for Senate in the state, has disavowed AIPAC and pledged not to take support from the group on the campaign trail.

But in late 2019, he attended an AIPAC event alongside a major donor to his campaign, according to a contemporaneous Instagram post about the event posted by an AIPAC supporter.

The post has been circulating online in recent days, driving discussion in progressive circles.

Since mounting his Senate bid, Talarico has vowed not to accept support from AIPAC or J Street, and has faced criticism from some in the Jewish community who believe he is singling out AIPAC in particular.

“I refuse to be complicit in the death and destruction in Gaza, and I will never use your tax dollars to support the killing in that part of the world, and it makes me sick to my stomach to see what’s happening,” Talarico said at an event last year. “I hope in this campaign here in Texas we can send a crystal-clear message to the rest of the country that we are done being complicit.”

Asked for comment on Talarico’s attendance at the AIPAC event, campaign spokesperson JT Ennis said, “James has been clear on his position on what is happening in Israel and Gaza. If anyone has questions on where James stands, they should look at his record, his extensive public comments, and the issues page on his website.”

Talarico has vowed to support efforts to ban some weapons sales to Israel and accused Israel of war crimes.

The same AIPAC supporter who shared the post with Talarico in 2019 was a major donor to his 2020 campaign; Talarico posted repeatedly on X about the donor offering to match up to $10,000 in donations to his campaign.

Talarico has also faced scrutiny on the campaign trail for accepting donations for his statehouse campaigns from a pro-gambling super PAC, Texas Sands PAC, funded by prominent pro-Israel GOP donor Miriam Adelson.

The Texas state representative is one a growing number of Democratic candidates who previously affiliated with or sought support from AIPAC but have since disavowed the group on the campaign trail amid increasing progressive hostility toward the pro-Israel organization, including Reps. Seth Moulton (D-MA), Valerie Foushee (D-NC), Deborah Ross (D-NC), Morgan McGarvey (D-KY), former New York Assemblyman Michael Blake and Evanston, Ill., Mayor Daniel Biss.