The woman who says she wants to represent New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District in Washington appears to be running a campaign so desperate and so divorced from reality that it has left even some of her fellow Democrats shaking their heads. Her name is Sue Altman, and she has a problem. The problem is named Adam Hamawy, and he is everything she is not.
Hamawy is a former Army combat surgeon who saved the life of Senator Tammy Duckworth after her helicopter was shot down over Iraq. He spent three weeks in Gaza in 2024, performing surgery on children with shrapnel wounds while Israeli bombs fell around him.
He refused to evacuate when offered the chance because he would not leave his team behind. When he finally returned home, he looked at a political system that funnels billions of dollars to a foreign military while American families struggle to afford health care, and he decided to run for Congress.
Altman, who Citizens Against AIPAC Corruption claimed accepted support from AIPAC allies Democratic Majority for Israel and Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs in her 2024 campaign, looked at the same system and saw an opportunity.
The clash between these two Democrats, who are among more than a dozen candidates vying to succeed retiring Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, has turned into something uglier than a simple policy disagreement.
It has become a window into a particular kind of political desperation, the kind that emerges when a candidate who has spent years cultivating a progressive image suddenly finds herself on the wrong side of a growing national consensus.
The flashpoint is the Iron Dome, Israel’s missile-defense system. Hamawy said something on a political livestream that, when you actually listen to it, is not particularly radical.
Hamawy said he does not support American taxpayer dollars funding the Iron Dome system, comparing it to giving a bully body armor so the bully can go out and terrorize the neighborhood with impunity.
He asked a question that more and more Americans are asking: What makes Israel different from Russia or Iran, that we should be subsidizing its military while condemning theirs?
For this, Altman has accused Hamawy of “cheerleading and wishing for the deaths of Israeli children.”
She has said it is “clear” that more Israeli civilian deaths are her opponent’s “policy goal.” She has called his position “beyond the pale” and “disgusting.”
Let us be precise about what happened here.
A man who has spent his adult life saving lives, who operated on American soldiers in Iraq and Palestinian children in Gaza, expressed a policy opinion shared by a growing number of progressives, including the liberal Zionist lobby J Street, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Representative Ro Khanna, and the Jewish Democratic congressional challenger Brad Lander.
That opinion is that Israel, a prosperous nation with a robust universal healthcare system and a higher per capita GDP than Britain, France, or Japan, can afford to pay for its own missile defense.
Altman responded by accusing him of wanting children to die.
There is a word for that kind of rhetoric. It is called slander.
“This is like the NRA saying you’re pro-school shooting if you oppose arming teachers,” said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director at Justice Democrats, a group that has endorsed Hamawy. “Does she support Iron Dome for Palestinians? If no, is she cheerleading the deaths of Palestinian kids?”
But Altman’s descent into hysterical accusation is not happening in a vacuum. It is the logical endpoint of a political career that has always been more about positioning than principle. Altman, you see, was not always a progressive darling.
She was born and raised as a Republican. A longtime Republican, in fact, who developed a chameleon-like ability to shed her old skin and emerge, blinking, into the liberal sunlight just as the Democratic Party’s center of gravity shifted leftward.
She worked for Senator Andy Kim. She ran for Congress in a neighboring district and lost. Now she is running again, and she appears to have sold her soul to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and its constellation of deep-pocketed, right-wing donors who have made it their mission to purge the Democratic Party of anyone who questions the blank-check alliance with Israel.
The evidence of her desperation is mounting. Her campaign has been forced to fend off challenges to her ballot petitions. Her fundraising, while respectable, has been outpaced by Hamawy, who raised nearly $550,000 in the first quarter of 2026, much of it from small donors in New Jersey. And her core argument against Hamawy is collapsing in real time, even as she makes it.
AIPAC is the largest source of Republican donations in Democratic primary races, and the group has engineered at least $230 million in spending to support President Donald Trump’s campaigns since 2020.
The Jerusalem Post reported that, according to a new survey released Tuesday, a majority of American Jews oppose AIPAC spending funds raised from Republican donors in Democratic primaries.
On the very day Altman was accusing her opponent of wanting Israeli children to die, the Israeli newspaper also reported that J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami announced that the leading liberal pro-Israel lobby was now calling for an end to American financial subsidies for Israel’s military, including the Iron Dome.
Ben-Ami argued, as did Hamawy, that Israel can afford its own defense. He said that treating Israel like every other ally would actually be good for the Jewish state, freeing it from the divisive wedge of American politics.
The majority of American Jews also oppose the unprovoked US war with Iran, viewing it as a reckless escalation without a clear mission or exit strategy.
Ocasio-Cortez, the face of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, has said she will vote against any further military aid to Israel, including the Iron Dome. She said the Israeli government is “well able to fund the system itself”.
Khanna has followed suit, saying, “We should not be subsidizing them, especially given their egregious violations of human rights law”.
Brad Lander, the Jewish former New York City comptroller running for Congress, has also reversed his previous support for Iron Dome funding and now says the United States should end all aid to Israel.
Altman finds herself on an island. She claims to support the Block the Bombs Act. She claims she wants conditions on aid. She called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal. But when it comes to the purely defensive Iron Dome, she draws a line in the sand and accuses her opponent of bloodlust.
The distinction is not lost on progressives in New Jersey, many of whom see Altman for what she is: a political opportunist who will say anything to win. Since 2011, the U.S. has provided $1.7 billion for the Iron Dome, and Netanyahu is already seeking billions more.
Lisa McCormick, a progressive Democrat who has spent years challenging the entrenched political establishment in New Jersey, has emerged as a sharp critic of Altman’s tactics.
The Education of Sue Altman: A study in political transformation
McCormick, who garnered nearly 40 percent of the vote in a 2018 primary against the corrupt incumbent Bob Menendez, has watched Altman attack Hamawy with disgust.
“What Sue Altman is doing is not politics. It is character assassination,” said McCormick. “She is taking a man who saved American lives in Iraq and Palestinian lives in Gaza, a man who has more courage and integrity in his little finger than she has in her entire body, and she is smearing him as a supporter of child murder because he asked a reasonable question about how we spend our tax dollars.”
“It is desperate. It is hateful,” said McCormick. “And it is exactly the kind of unscrupulous method you expect from a candidate who has no real principles of her own.”
McCormick pointed to Altman’s Republican past as evidence of a pattern.
“She was a Republican. Then she became a progressive. Now she sounds like a neoconservative on Israel. She changes her colors depending on what room she is in. That is not leadership,” said McCormick. “That is malevolent authoritarianism, and the people of New Jersey’s 12th district deserve someone better than that. We deserve a fighter.”
The contrast between the two candidates could not be starker. Hamawy, the son of Egyptian immigrants, grew up in Old Bridge and served his country in uniform. He has spent his career putting himself in harm’s way to save others.
His website does not mince words. He says he is furious about what is happening in the country. He says ICE is terrorizing communities. He says the government is sinking into a “cesspool of corruption.”
He says the system is working exactly the way it was built to work, for the wealthy and powerful few. And he says he refuses to accept that as normal.
Altman, by contrast, talks about building coalitions and believing in democracy and hope. She says she is “pained” by what she has seen in Gaza. She says she has “lost more sleep” over the U.S.-Israel relationship than any other issue. But when pressed, when forced to choose between her carefully cultivated progressive credentials and her apparent allegiance to the pro-Israel donor class, she chooses the donors. She chooses to accuse a decorated combat surgeon of wanting children to die.
The people of the 12th district should ask themselves a simple question: Who do you want representing you in Washington? A man who has spent his life cleaning up the messes that politicians create, or a woman who has spent her career learning how to talk like a progressive while serving the same old interests?
One of them has never asked for permission to speak truth to power. The other has apparently sold her soul to AIPAC.
The choice, when you put it that way, is not much of a choice at all.
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