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The Munichian Candidate

Terrorist’s grandson Ammar Campa-Najjar is a “Palestinian-Mexican” American Democrat on the rise.

Grandson of terrorist rises in race against indicted GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter.” That supposedly “inflammatory” headline drew criticism on social media, and even the Reagan Battalion tweeted that it was “disgusting.” On the other hand, none of the critics questioned its accuracy.

The terrorist was Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar of Black September, the PLO death squad that murdered 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics in 1972. The terrorist’s grandson is Ammar Campa-Najjar, 29, a Democrat challenging Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter in California’s 50th Congressional District, where Hunter is under indictment for misusing campaign funds. Ammar acknowledges that Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar is his grandfather but calls the revelation “unfortunate” and dismisses the Fox News headline as a “quick take.”

Ammar Campa-Najjar comes billed as a “a Palestinian-Mexican American,” what Obama biographer David Garrow (Rising Star) might call a “composite character.” A more interesting question is how the family of Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar managed to arrive in the United States.

The Munich massacre and terrorist grandfather obviously do not appear in the “Meet Ammar” section of his campaign website. “The son of a Mexican American mother and a Middle Eastern immigrant father,” the Democrat explains, “Ammar was raised in San Diego until the family moved to Gaza for four years. When war broke out and it became unsafe to remain, Ammar and his mother and brother returned to San Diego.” There he became a “youth leader,” and graduated from San Diego State University “after taking time off to help reelect the president.”

In 2012, “Ammar served as Deputy Regional Field Director for President Obama’s reelection campaign.” Then “following the election, Ammar secured a White House position in the Executive Office of President Obama.” If any journalist, politician, or intelligence official knew about the PLO terrorist connection they said and wrote nothing. The president, who called Nidal Hasan’s murder of 13 Americans “workplace violence,” would not likely be troubled by Ammar’s familial connection to the massacre of 11 Israelis by Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar of Black September.

The next year, 1973, Israeli commandos killed Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar and his wife in Beirut. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, orphaned son Yusuf al-Najjar “moved to Egypt and later immigrated to eastern San Diego County where he met his wife, Abigail.” The piece does not explore why the terrorist’s son wanted to live in the United States or how he was able to enter the country.

What year did he enter, and on what basis? Did this raise any red flags with the INS? What was it about San Diego that attracted the “Middle Eastern immigrant father,” as Ammar describes him? Readers learn nothing and find no documentation of the move. On the other hand, readers are told that “Yasser al-Najjar later moved from California to Gaza,” and “Campa also lived there from ages nine to 12 before returning to San Diego just before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”

Why anybody would leave San Diego, “America’s Finest City,” for Gaza is an interesting question. Nobody seems to have asked Yasser al-Najjar’s wife Abigail if it was a quest for greater freedom, economic opportunity, or better schools for young Ammar. And once in Gaza why return to the United States?

Campa-Najjar claims that “the relative,” his grandfather, “was mentioned” in Gaza but the leftist Palestinian-Mexican Democrat, also a Christian, does not go into detail. The easy return to America raises other questions but as the terrorist’s grandson spins it, “I was fleeing war and then unfortunately war followed us.” In America “it’s a comeback story, it’s people fleeing a tragic past and hoping for a successful future.”

Plenty to ponder there, but journalists did not rush to fill in the blanks. The American establishment media accepts everything the Palestinian-Mexican American says as gospel, so no surprise that it was not the U.S. media that discovered the terrorist grandfather.

“Grandson of Munich Massacre Terrorist Is Running for Congress,” headlined a Haaretz piece last February. As the Israeli publication explained, “Ammar Campa-Najjar’s grandfather was in the terrorist organization Black September in the 1970s.” When this could not be denied, the terrorist’s grandson said in a statement, “For the sake of the victims, I hoped this tragedy wouldn’t be politicized. But if these old wounds must be reopened, then I pray God gives purpose to their unspeakable pain. I pray that purpose is to see peace prioritized by my generation of Palestinians, Israelis and the whole of humanity.”

The use of “tragedy” for an atrocity is disgusting, but the establishment media did more: they gave the Munich massacre a favorable spin. Consider this classic from Javier Panzar of the Los Angeles Times: “His campaign was dealt a serious blow in February when an Israeli newspaper reported that his grandfather, Muhammed Yusuf al-Najjar, was one of the leaders of the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics that left 11 athletes and coaches dead. Israeli commandos killed his grandfather in 1973.”

Just so Javier knows, the Black September Islamic terrorists not only killed the Israelis but mutilated weightlifter Yossef Romano, cutting off his genitals in the presence of nine other captives. All suffered vicious beatings before the terrorists murdered them, but the German police kept this information under wraps until 1992.

Thirteen years after Munich, in 1985, Hezbollah terrorists hijacked a commercial jet and singled out Navy diver Robert Stethem solely because he was a member of the United States military. Stethem fought back and the terrorists beat him before shooting the American and dumping his body on the tarmac. The American’s face was so deformed he had to be identified through fingerprints and medical records.

Stethem has a ship named after him but it’s not clear if the United States has dared to take out his killers, as the Israelis did with Ammar Yusuf al-Najjar’s grandfather. In a proud Navy town like San Diego, somebody might ask Ammar which way he would run on that one. Same for the bombers of the USS Cole. What did they say about that back in Gaza, where Ammar’s “relative” was mentioned?

The Palestinian-Mexican American’s story is full of trap doors and escape hatches but for the establishment media the rule is don’t know, don’t ask, and don’t tell. And of course, Black September lives don’t matter. His former White House boss has endorsed him. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)  and Bronx socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are also on board.

Duncan Hunter’s legal woes gave Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar’s Democrat grandson a surge of sorts. In the sanctuary state of California, more than 1 million illegals are already registered to vote, and in November that could push this composite character across the line.

Photo Credit: Thomas McKinless/CQ Roll Call

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About Lloyd Billingsley

Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Hollywood Party and other books including Bill of Writes and Barack ‘em Up: A Literary Investigation. His journalism has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Spectator (London) and many other publications. Billingsley serves as a policy fellow with the Independent Institute.