Ammar Campa-Najjar, the self-described “Palestinian Mexican-American,” was previously known as Ammar Yasser Najjar after his father, an official with the Palestinian Authority in Gaza who supposedly “migrated to the United States on a student visa.”
As outlined here previously, Ammar is also the grandson of Muhammad Abu Yousef al-Najjar, mastermind of the Palestinian terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The terrorists not only killed the Israelis but mutilated weightlifter Yossef Romano. German police kept this information under wraps until 1992.
Al-Najjar’s grandson Ammar worked in the Obama White House and, billed by Rolling Stone as a “rockstar Democratic candidate,” ran for Congress, losing to Duncan Hunter in 2018 and Darrell Issa in 2020. The rockstar Democrat had never held public office or served on any community board, commission, or civic group in the city of Chula Vista, near San Diego, where he ran for mayor in 2022.
As La Prensa San Diego reported, Ammar used pre-recorded messages from 2018 and 2020, giving the impression that Obama endorsed him in the mayor’s race, when the former president had endorsed nobody. Yasser Najjar’s son, who is single, also sent out a campaign photo of himself with a woman and children captioned “Ammar and his family.”
As it turned out, the woman was Ammar’s cousin with her two children, information not revealed in the initial caption. Despite more than 700 mail-in ballots with either non-matching or missing signatures, the rockstar Democrat lost to Republican John McCann. The Palestinian Mexican-American, who says he “lived in Gaza from ages 8 to 12,” returning in 2001 just before 9/11, has now joined the U.S. Navy.
“Today, in front of my family, friends, my grandmother in heaven and God, I stood aboard the USS Midway and swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend our nation as a commissioned United States Navy Officer,” Ammar told People Magazine, citing Winston Churchill that as a reservist he was now “twice the citizen.”
The former Ammar Yasser Najjar claimed he first tried to join up at age 17, but as People’s Virginia Chamlee explained, “his mother refused to sign off on the decision, due to his father being away at the time.” According to Robin Abcarian of the Los Angeles Times, “he’d always wanted to serve in the military, and even tried to enlist at 17 before his mother put a stop to it,” but there’s a problem here.
During a “U.S.-funded war” in Gaza, Ammar explained, “I, my mom, stepmom and younger brothers hid in the dark corner of a cold kitchen floor as Apache helicopters and F-16s leveled surrounding buildings and carpet-bombed the town for hours.” Chamlee and Abcarian didn’t specify which of Ammar’s two mommies barred him from enlisting at 17. Neither journalist sought comment from Yasser Najjar, the Palestinian Authority official in Gaza who somehow migrated to the USA on a student visa.
“The military doesn’t have the luxury of getting into these cultural disputes trying to divide us,” the new officer told Abcarian. “Where some people have seen my heritage, my background as a liability, the Navy says those are not liabilities, they are assets. A command of the Arab language, fluent in Spanish, having lived in the Middle East, my cultural competency gives us a strategic advantage. . . My Arabic is actually more fluent than my Spanish.”
Abcarian found Campa-Najjar to be somewhat “guarded” but accepted his contention that he was done with politics, “at least for now.” The columnist might check out the rockstar Democrat’s Wikipedia entry.
“Ammar Campa-Najjar is a United States naval officer,” it begins, as though he had graduated Annapolis, served for many years and commanded a destroyer. His father Yasser Najjar “was an important internal critic of Palestinian hardliners” and during his time in Gaza, “he attempted to counteract the rising influence of Hamas.” GrandfatherMuhammad Abu Yousef al-Najjar “has been the subject of significant controversy,” and so on.
The rockstar Democrat may be prepping for another House run, or maybe California’s U.S. Senate seat up for grabs in 2024. In Congress he would doubtless perform as a kind of trans Ilhan Omar or Rashaida Tlaib, members of the Hamas-Jihad Caucus. The former Ammar Yasser Najjar also raises issues for the Navy, which has a history with Islamic terrorism.
In 1985, 13 years after Munich, Hezbollah terrorists hijacked a commercial airliner and singled out diver Robert Stethem solely because he was a member of the U.S. military. Stethem fought back and the terrorists beat the American, shot him dead, and dumped his body on the tarmac. Stethem’s face was so deformed he had to be identified through fingerprints and medical records. The Navy named a ship after Stethem but it’s not clear whether the United States ever took out his killers.
On October 12, 2000, less than a year before 9/11, terrorists bombed the USS Cole, killing 17 American sailors and wounding 40. One of the fatalities was Petty Officer First Class Kevin Rux, and 23 years later his relatives are still waiting for closure since the accused mastermind of the operation has yet to stand trial. The former Ammar Yasser Najjar, critic of “U.S.-funded” wars has yet clarify his position.
The Navy security check is very thorough but the former Gaza resident whipped through in record time. He boasts that he already passed the White House background check, but leaves out a key detail. The FBI does the checking but the president makes the final call. The former Ammar Yasser Najjar, was the one the former Barry Soetoro wanted. If anybody thought he was pulling strings for the Munichian candidate it would be hard to blame them.
Ammar’s 2018 opponent was Duncan Hunter, a former Marine who served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. His opponent had used different names “to hide his family’s ties to terrorism,” charged Hunter. True to form, the rockstar Democrat never revealed those ties until the Israeli publication Haaretz broke the news that “Grandson of Munich Massacre Terrorist Is Running for Congress.”
Hunter wondered how his opponent would handle classified information involving U.S. operations in the Middle East. As the Republican’s campaign materials proclaimed, Ammar Campa-Najjar was “a risk we can’t ignore.” Voters agreed.
In 2020 the rockstar Democrat was endorsed by former president Obama, Rip Van Winkle communist Bernie Sanders, and non-Cherokee Sen. Elizabeth Warren, among others. The Democrat’s campaign contributions included $17,500 from board members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). A 2013 Department of Justice report states that evidence at a 2007 trial “linked CAIR leaders to Hamas,” a specially designated terrorist organization, and CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.”
Republican Darrell Issa prevailed against the rockstar Democrat, who failed to become mayor of Chula Vista. In 2023, as Scott Johnson explains, the 10/7 massacre changes everything.
Last Sunday, nearly a thousand pro-Hamas demonstrators gathered in San Diego. If the newly minted naval officer showed up, he did not speak to reporters about Hamas atrocities or his plans for 2024. As Trump likes to say, we’ll have to see what happens. In the meantime, it’s all about memory against forgetting.