Commentary: Ammar Campa-Najjar, the ‘Munichian candidate,’ joins the Navy

Muhammad Abu Yousef al-Najjar masterminded the Palestinian terrorist terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Muhammad’s grandson, Ammar Yasser Najjar, named after his father Yasser Najjar but calling himself Ammar “Campa-Najjar,” served in the Obama White House for a time in 2012.

Billed as a “Palestinian Mexican-American” and a “rockstar Democrat,” Campa-Najjar ran for Congress in 2018 and 2020, losing to Duncan Hunter and Darrell Issa in California’s 50th district. After a failed run for mayor of Chula Vista last year, the “Munichian candidate” decided to join 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, Campa-Najjar said 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.

The rockstar Democrat claims his family moved from San Diego to Gaza, where he lived from ages eight to 12, returning in 2001. During a “U.S.-funded war” in Gaza, he 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 the Palestinian Mexican-American’s two mommies had barred him from enlisting at 17. Neither writer sought comment from his father, Yasser Najjar, who supposedly migrated to the United States on a student visa.

In 2003, Linda Gradstein of National Public Radio interviewed Yasser al-Najjar at his office in Gaza, where he served with the Palestinian Authority. Yasser was married, with four children, but his wife and children were not named.

Gradstein did not ask Yasser al-Najjar how or when he entered the United States and when he earned his MBA from San Diego State University. Al-Najjar did not volunteer the information, and none of it emerged in 2012, when Ammar Campa-Najjar worked for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and secured a position at the White House.

In February 2018, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz broke the news that “Grandson of Munich Massacre Terrorist Is Running for Congress.” He failed, but now someone has pulled strings to get him into the Navy.

“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 and commanded a carrier battle group. 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.” Grandfather Muhammad Abu Yousef al-Najjar “has been the subject of significant controversy.” And so on.

On October 15, nearly 1,000 pro-Hamas demonstrators gathered in San Diego.

With the death of San Francisco Democrat Dianne Feinstein, a Senate seat has come open. Laphonza Butler, Governor Gavin Newsom’s choice to fill the void, says she will not run in 2024. As Trump likes to say, we’ll have to see what happens.