New York City's first lady, Rama Duwaji, used social media to celebrate Palestinian plane hijacker Leila Khaled, blame white Americans for terrorism, and attack U.S. service members, according to a report from the Washington Free Beacon that reviewed resurfaced posts from her Tumblr account.
The 28-year-old wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, himself a staunch critic of Israel, reportedly maintained accounts where she hailed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and posted anti-American screeds during her teenage years and early twenties while living in the Middle East.
This latest revelation lands just a week after reports surfaced that Duwaji liked a celebratory Instagram post on the day of Hamas' October 7, 2023, attack and liked another post dismissing Hamas' rapes of Israelis as a "mass hoax."
The Washington Free Beacon linked the posts to Duwaji partly through facial recognition technology. The Post noted it was unable to independently verify the account or posts.
What the Free Beacon found, if accurate, paints a picture that goes well beyond youthful indiscretion. In September 2017, Duwaji reportedly posted a photo of Leila Khaled, who took part in plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970, with a caption quoting the hijacker:
If it does good for my cause, I'd be happy to accept death.
That same month, she shared an image of a Bangladeshi postage stamp bearing the words "We salute the valiant freedom fighters of Palestine."
Two years earlier, she reposted a tirade targeting U.S. service members, claiming troops:
fightin in imperialist wars are not brave nor are they fighting for anyone's freedom.
The same repost accused the American military of "mercilessly slaughtering 3rd world civilians" in service of "American hegemony."
In December 2015, she reposted content that blamed white people for the creation of al Qaeda:
You can't blame muslims for terrorism because they didn't construct, fund nor train Al-Qaeda. White People did that too.
That same year, Duwaji seethed on Twitter that Tel Aviv "shouldn't exist in the first place," calling its residents "occupiers." She also fired off the N-word in a 2013 tweet, when she was reportedly 15.
Mamdani's response to the growing controversy has been to draw a wall between himself and his wife's digital footprint. He claimed Duwaji "has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall" and argued she shouldn't face scrutiny over her social media activity.
City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Post.
The "she holds no formal position" defense is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Rama Duwaji isn't some distant acquaintance. She is the mayor's wife, the city's first lady, attending events and representing New York on a public stage. The idea that her documented enthusiasm for plane hijackers and her dismissal of a terrorist massacre should be treated as a private matter requires a level of credulity that Mamdani has no right to ask for.
None of this exists in a vacuum. Mamdani ran as one of the most aggressively anti-Israel figures in New York politics. His victory handed City Hall to someone whose ideological sympathies were never a secret. The only surprise is that anyone is surprised by the views of the people closest to him.
Consider the timeline. Posts glorifying a hijacker. Posts trashing American troops. Posts erasing an entire city's right to exist. Then, on October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out the deadliest attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust, a "like" on a celebratory post. And another "like" on a post calling documented sexual violence a "mass hoax."
This is not a case of a teenager posting something dumb once and growing out of it. The posts span a decade, from 2013 through 2023. The tone shifts, the platforms change, but the conviction stays fixed.
Every mayor's spouse occupies an informal but visible role. They sit at dinners. They appear at memorials. They shape the culture of an administration even without a title. When that spouse has spent years praising terrorists, denying atrocities, and attacking the American military, it tells you something about the moral atmosphere inside the building.
Mamdani wants the public to believe that scrutiny of his wife's posts amounts to an unfair attack. But public life comes with public accountability. That's not a radical proposition. It's a basic one.
New York City is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. It is home to tens of thousands of military veterans and active-duty families. It is a city that buried its own on September 11 and rebuilt itself on the resilience of ordinary people who reject everything those posts represent.
Those New Yorkers now have a first lady who reportedly celebrated the people who hijacked planes, mocked the troops who defend the nation, and treated the horrors of October 7 as something to applaud.
Mamdani says his wife holds no formal position. Maybe not. But the city's highest office now carries her baggage whether he admits it or not.