New York City first lady Rama Duwaji animated a portrait of Sliman Mansour and called him her inspiration, the same artist who branded Anne Frank’s diaries a hoax and hailed Hamas founders as heroes.
In an April 2024 video, the Brooklyn-based illustrator and wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani sat in a studio marked by a banner reading “Artists Against Apartheid: Palestine Will Be Free,” wore a keffiyeh-patterned headband, and brought Mansour’s image to life on screen.
“Hi, I’m Rama, a Syrian illustrator and animator based in Brooklyn, and today I’m going to be animating a portrait of Sliman Mansour, who is a painter and sculptor that’s inspired the work that I do. Sliman is an artist of the Intifada,” she said.
"Hi, I'm Rama, a Syrian illustrator and animator based in Brooklyn, and today I'm going to be animating a portrait of Sliman Mansour, who is a painter and sculptor that's inspired the work that I do. Sliman is an artist of the Intifada,"
Duwaji added that Mansour’s paintings captured “the Palestinian experience under occupation” and the “emotion behind his portraits,” noting he had been “jailed twice since the start of his career.” The Washington Free Beacon reported the video and a detailed review of Mansour’s public record after his death in August.
That record stretches far beyond gallery walls. It includes open praise for Hamas founders, denial of the Anne Frank diaries, a shared Adolf Hitler painting, and posts timed to the October 7 massacre and later Israeli strikes on terror leaders.
In a November 2017 Facebook post, Mansour labeled Ahmed Yassin and Abdul Aziz Al-Rantasi “[great heroes].” Both men founded Hamas and directed attacks on civilians; Israel killed them in 2004 airstrikes.
Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who later orchestrated the October 7 attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis, used a reinterpretation of Mansour’s painting The Camel of Bearings as the backdrop for a 2021 Gaza press conference. Mansour told Al Jazeera he was pleased.
"They didn't put the face of a politician, but rather the face of a young resistance fighter who has become the future in the eyes of Palestinians, the resistance fighter who carries Jerusalem on his back,"
Sinwar used the same event to thank Iran for money, weapons, and expertise, and to declare his goal: “the demise of Israel and through Jihad and armed struggle.” Mansour later said Palestinians had a right to “armed resistance” against Israel.
Hours after the October 7 assault, Mansour posted his painting “Rising,” which shows a Palestinian fighter clasping a gun. On October 17 he shared an image of Ghassan Kanafani, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a longtime U.S.-designated terrorist group, and added the line “The struggle has no end.”
"The struggle has no end,"
In NPR remarks after his death, Mansour recalled taking part in the first intifada by throwing stones “and whatever.” The second intifada left more than a thousand Israelis dead, mostly civilians.
Mansour’s social media went further into classic antisemitic territory. In a February 2016 Facebook post he wrote that the diaries “I am Frank” that “they made the world famous finally turned out to be the invention of an American Jewish writer.” He liked a follow-up comment claiming the Jewish mind works by “setting up, cheating, making profits” and that the diaries were “a forgery, a fantasy, and a deception” aimed at money and control.
In September 2015 he shared a painting by Adolf Hitler and called the Nazi dictator a “technically proficient artist.” He liked a comment that read, “May God have mercy on you... oh Muhammad Hitler... you were a natural Muslim Daesh.” A year later he accused Hillary Clinton of donating money to ISIS.
These were not private scribbles. They sat on public Facebook pages alongside his art, available for anyone who treated him as a cultural hero.
Mansour kept the pattern going after October 7. On July 31, 2024, the day Israel killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, he posted his painting “Abu Jihad.” The next day after Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, he posted “The Martyr.” Months after Walid Daqqa died in an Israeli prison while serving a life sentence for killing an Israeli soldier, Mansour met Daqqa’s widow and daughter and posted the photos.
His early career tied him to the same orbit. In 1980 the Palestine Martyrs Works Society, which oversaw PLO payments to families of Palestinians killed while attacking Jews, first published his work. He drew cartoons for the PLO newspaper Al Fajr. Yasser Arafat later honored him. The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art featured his pieces. In March 2025 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan singled him out for praise when Mansour received the Necip Fazıl Award in Istanbul.
None of this stopped New York’s first lady from holding him up as the model for her own art.
The Free Beacon review noted that Duwaji liked multiple social media posts on and after October 7 that cast the massacre as legitimate resistance and liked another that called reports of Hamas sexual violence “a mass rape hoax.” Her only public apology, the outlet noted, concerned a separate use of the N-word.
She has also been photographed inside Gracie Mansion serving food to Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University organizer of anti-Israel protests. That image fits a broader pattern around the Mamdani administration, including the moment Mamdani gave a 9/11 memorial pen to an ex-al-Qaeda lawyer.
Recent months added more questions about priorities. Duwaji served as artist in residence at a luxury Islamic women’s retreat in Portugal, a move that drew its own criticism over how the first lady spends her time, detailed in coverage of the Portugal Islamic calligraphy retreat. She has also done commercial work for an olive oil company.
Her husband, meanwhile, has kept a steady drumbeat of left-wing foreign-policy rhetoric. He called Netanyahu the “architect of horrific genocide” ahead of a UN visit, escalating a public feud that leaves little room for the city’s large Jewish population to feel heard at City Hall.
At home the mayor has pressed hard against federal immigration enforcement. After a Bronx shooting involving a gang-linked illegal immigrant he demanded ICE abolition, a stance that drew sharp pushback from senators who say he will not even back his own NYPD.
Duwaji framed Mansour as a victim of occupation and a wellspring of emotion. The public trail shows something else: a painter who cheered Hamas founders, denied one of the Holocaust’s most famous documents, circulated Hitler’s art with warm commentary, and posted fighter-and-gun imagery while the bodies from October 7 were still being counted.
New Yorkers now have a first lady who animated that record into a glowing portrait and told viewers it inspired the work she does. City Hall has offered no fresh accounting of that choice.
When the people who set the cultural tone at Gracie Mansion treat Jew-hatred and terror apologetics as artistic pedigree, taxpayers can judge the standard for themselves.