The piece examines Dr. Adam Hamawy, a Democratic congressional candidate who strongly dismissed claims that Hamas used Gaza hospitals as military bases after working three weeks at the European Hospital in May 2024, and later events showed Israel recovered senior Hamas figures, including Mohammed Sinwar, from a tunnel beneath that same hospital, raising questions about certainty, media amplification, and judgment.
Dr. Adam Hamawy is an Army veteran and plastic surgeon now running for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th District. He spent three weeks working at Gaza’s European Hospital in May 2024 and returned to the United States as a prominent media source. His on-the-ground status gave his statements weight among outlets eager to push back on Israeli claims about militant activity in hospitals.
Hamawy spoke plainly and without hedging. He told audiences and reporters that the hospital he worked in was purely civilian and lacked any subterranean military infrastructure. Those assertions were repeated broadly and treated as decisive by large portions of the media environment.
“I saw no fighters at all. I didn’t see any guns in the hospital, there was no one that I could identify as a combatant. There were definitely no tunnels underground, and no command base there.”
He framed his view as shared by other medical staff, presenting his perspective as not merely personal but representative. That amplified the claim, creating a narrative that hospitals were off-limits to military use and therefore off-limits to scrutiny. The combination of medical credentials, military service, and first-hand experience made the claim especially persuasive to audiences inclined to trust experts.
“This isn’t just me, this is unanimous,” he said, pointing to other doctors who had worked across Gaza hospitals.
Events that followed complicated that narrative. In May 2025, Israeli forces found Mohammed Sinwar, a senior Hamas military leader, dead in a passage beneath the European Hospital’s emergency department. Israeli statements described the location as roughly eight meters underground and part of a broader tunnel network. The discovery, including other senior operatives, undercut the blanket certainty that no tunnels or command bases existed below that facility.
Soldiers and journalists who entered the tunnel system reported finding mattresses, maps, operational plans, explosives, and weapons, and they noted lingering signs of decay and death weeks after the strike. Israeli military officials also asserted that hostages were likely held within the same tunnel system while medical staff were working above, a claim that adds a chilling layer to the story and to the consequences of public assertions made without qualification.
A senior Israeli commander described the operation in straightforward terms. “We found a military base under a hospital, period.” That blunt assessment clashes with earlier public declarations that hospitals in Gaza were purely civilian spaces, forcing a reassessment of how confident witnesses and commentators should be when speaking about what lies beneath buildings in a conflict zone.
There are still caveats to note: Hamas denies the claims and independent verification is limited given the realities on the ground. Those are not trivial nuances. But multiple first-person reports from journalists and military personnel who searched the tunnels provide tangible detail that contradicts the earlier sweeping statements presented as consensus.
Political context matters here. Hamawy’s candidacy is backed by prominent progressives, and his statements have been cited proudly by those who view his firsthand account as validating a broader narrative. For voters and for media consumers, the core issue is not merely whether the doctor was dishonest but whether he overstated what he saw and whether that overstatement was repeated without adequate caution.
It’s plausible he genuinely did not see signs of militant infrastructure while working in clinical areas above ground; Hamas has repeatedly hidden assets beneath civilian structures in ways that can be invisible to people inside. What is harder to justify is absolute certainty — declaring a complete absence of tunnels and command centers when those facilities were, as later operations revealed, present beneath the floor.
Voters in New Jersey’s 12th District are now weighing whether a candidate who spoke with such certainty about a sensitive, dangerous theater deserves their trust on broader national security and foreign policy questions. The episode serves as a reminder that on combat and counterterrorism issues, confident assertions from otherwise credible sources demand careful scrutiny before they become policy or campaign talking points.
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