As has been widely reported, Ammar Campa-Najjar, currently running for congress in CA’s 50th District, is the grandson of Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar (aka Abu Yusuf), one of the leaders of the Palestinian terror group Black September and a mastermind behind the Munich Massacre. But the same reports indicate he repudiates granddad’s terrorism.
In an interview with Israel’s Haaretz daily this week, Campa-Najjar rejected his grandfather’s actions as “horrific,” saying there was “never justification for killing innocent civilians.”
“As an American citizen living in the 21st century, I will never be able to understand or condone the actions and motivations of my grandfather,” he told the paper.
You can’t ask for much more of a condemnation than that.
Except it turns out Ammar Campa-Najjar seems to have a high opinion of gramps after all, if this Instagram post of his is anything to go by.
A “legend” and “hero”? This certainly does not sound like the same man who said just a few years later “I will never be able to understand or condone the actions and motivations of my grandfather.”
The question is: did Ammar Campa-Najjar change his mind in the interceding years? Or is he being an opportunistic politician who says to the wider audience what they want to hear, but when his guard is down lets out his true feelings.
I can’t pretend to know the answer to this, but feel obligated to ask the question.
