New York City’s first lady, Rama Duwaji, once glorified terrorism and praised anti-American violence in a flurry of social media posts made as a teenager and young adult, a stunning revelation that raises fresh questions about the judgment of the woman now living in Gracie Mansion.
A Washington Free Beacon investigation uncovered X and Tumblr accounts tied to Duwaji that show her celebrating convicted hijackers, mocking U.S. soldiers, and cheering on violent uprisings tied to Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
In one of the most disturbing examples, a 20-year-old Duwaji posted a photo of Leila Khaled, the first woman ever to hijack a passenger plane. Beneath the picture, she quoted Khaled’s chilling motto: “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death.” Khaled participated in two plane hijackings, once threatening to detonate a grenade in the cockpit if pilots refused her entry.
Just two years earlier, at 17, Duwaji reposted a celebratory image of Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, another member of the PFLP who died while building a bomb meant for an attack on Tel Aviv. “First Palestinian woman to fight in resistance after 1967 occupation,” Duwaji wrote, aligning herself with a woman revered as a “martyr” across much of Palestinian society.
Her Tumblr page also featured imagery romanticizing the First Intifada, a violent uprising that left roughly 200 Israelis and hundreds of Palestinians dead. One 2017 post portrayed a demonstrator sewing a Palestinian flag, with Duwaji drawing attention to the photo’s role in the “resistance.”
The shocking posts didn’t stop at glorifying terrorists. Duwaji also turned her anger toward the United States. In July 2015 she amplified a post that mocked American soldiers as “mercilessly slaughtering civilians” and “fighting to maintain American hegemony.”
When Snapchat featured Tel Aviv in its “live story,” Duwaji angrily lashed out — retweeting messages that declared, “F** #TelAviv. Shouldn’t exist in the first place. They’re occupiers.” In other posts, she reposted claims that “white people” were to blame for creating al-Qaeda, not Muslims, and shared a Bangladeshi postage stamp that read, “We salute the valiant freedom fighters of Palestine.”
Her accounts, active mostly while she lived overseas, went silent years ago, but the evidence remains archived across multiple platforms.
The revelations come on the heels of several other scandals surrounding Duwaji and her husband, Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Free Beacon recently exposed that Duwaji produced artwork for an essay by Susan Abulhawa, a pro-Hamas writer who called the October 7 massacre “spectacular” and described Jewish Israelis as “rootless soulless ghouls.”
Around the same time, Duwaji was found to have “liked” Instagram posts celebrating the October 7 killings — including one calling sexual assault reports against Israeli women a “mass rape hoax.”
Adding to the outrage, earlier this month the mayor and his wife were photographed dining with Mahmoud Khalil, an anti-Israel activist who declared it was “racist” to ask him to condemn Hamas.
Investigators tied the disturbing accounts to Duwaji through photos, personal details, and even references to her pet cat, Mishka, the same name listed in public reports about her family. Posts referenced her birthday, travels between New York, Dubai, and Syria, and other verifiable information.
The accounts carrying the most inflammatory material have since gone inactive, though remnants remain online — a digital paper trail offering a window into the radical sympathies of the New York City’s first lady.