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New Jersey Democratic Rep.-elect Adam Hamawy struggled to answer whether he viewed Iran as an adversary and Israel as an ally to the U.S. on Tuesday.
During an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” co-host Pamela Brown repeatedly asked Hamawy about his views on both of the countries regarding his demand that the U.S. pull all military funding from Israel in the wake of the war with Iran.
“Well, now, what I see is that we were pushed into this war by Israel,” Hamawy said. “It’s not helping Americans. Americans didn’t ask for it. It’s illegal and immoral. And at this point, I think the U.S. and the Iranians want this war to end.”
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Democrat Adam Hamawy won his election for New Jersey congressman last week. (Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images)
“Do you see Iran as the adversary?” Brown asked.
“I see that 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 answered.
Brown repeatedly pressed Hamawy on whether he viewed Iran as an adversary, and the conressman-elect continued to avoid answering despite Brown reminding him that Iranians have chanted, “Death to America.”
“We’ve been saying ‘Death to Iran’ for decades as well,” Hamawy responded. “And so, what we need to do is use diplomacy.”
“They’ve killed a lot of Americans,” Brown said.
“And we’ve killed a lot of them as well,” Hamawy said.
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Adam Hamawy appeared to justify Iran’s tension with the U.S. during a CNN interview. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Hamawy pushed for diplomacy over war, though Brown pointed out that he still refused to clarify his views on Iran or Israel.
“I’m saying that that doesn’t help us. We’re in the middle of a war right now that is making American lives worse. We’re putting our troops at risk. We’re creating, you know, an economic crisis that we don’t need. And so, the blame game doesn’t help. So, how do we get out of this?” Hamawy said.
He later referred to the Iranian government as a “dictatorship” and “authoritarian,” though he suggested that America’s actions have made the country more radical.
Fox News Digital reached out to Hamawy’s team for comment but did not immediately hear back.
Hamawy’s comments resembled Michigan Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed, who refused to say whether Israel or Iran was the greater threat to America despite repeated questioning.
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Adam Hamawy, right, has ties to Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, left, who was convicted of inciting a Manhattan bombing that killed six people. (Najlah Feanny/Getty Images, Islam Dogru/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“I think both of them have proven dangerous in their own way,” El-Sayed said in October. “One at risk of attacking us, one getting us into wars. We have no business fighting.”
Hamawy won a House seat despite scrutiny for his previous volunteer work with the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) — a Chicago-based charity that federal authorities later identified as providing financial and logistical support to al-Qaeda.
He was also scrutinized over his past relationship with Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, commonly known as the “Blind Sheikh,” whom he accompanied on a trip in 1991.
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Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO of StandWithUs, an international nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel, condemned Hamawy’s comments, accusing him of refusing to acknowledge a “moral reality.”
“Representative-elect Hamawy refused to acknowledge a basic factual and moral reality. Iran’s oppressive regime has made itself the enemy of both the United States and its own people. American officials who don’t understand that should have no role in our country’s foreign policy decisions,” Rothstein told Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ Pedro B Rodriguez-Aparicio and Charles Creitz contributed to this report.