The wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has drawn scrutiny over a string of social media posts from her teenage years and early twenties that praised violent militants and criticized U.S. military policy. This article lays out specific examples from those posts, including praise for well-known militants and inflammatory commentary that resurfaced as she entered public life. The pattern raises direct questions about judgment and what voters should expect from the mayor’s inner circle.
Rama Duwaji posted a photo in September 2017 of Leila Khaled, a longtime leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who took part in plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970. The post carried the caption “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death,” and the image highlighted admiration for a figure whose actions are tied to terrorism. That kind of public celebration of a hijacker is alarming to anyone who prioritizes public safety and basic support for victims.
Leila Khaled is known historically as the first woman to hijack an airplane, and she is revered by militants for those actions. Praising or amplifying her image is not a neutral political statement; it is a choice that signals sympathy with violent tactics. For a mayoral spouse to have promoted such an icon invites serious questions about alignment with mainstream values.
Other posts tied Duwaji to celebrated militants from earlier decades, including a repost in March 2015 that praised Shadia Abu Ghazaleh on International Women’s Day. The image showed Ghazaleh posing with a rifle, and historical reports say she was killed in 1968 when a bomb she was building exploded, a device allegedly bound for Tel Aviv. That context matters because it links admiration to real acts of violence rather than abstract political protest.
Some of the shared material was cultural or symbolic, such as a photograph captioned “Photography: ‘A Palestinian demonstrator sews a Palestinian Liberation Organization flag before a protest during the first Intifada’, February, 1988.” Another post highlighted a Bangladeshi postage stamp reading “We salute the valiant freedom fighters of Palestine.” These images are political and charged, and combined with more explicit endorsements they create a pattern that is hard to ignore.
There were also posts criticizing American military involvement abroad, including one that stated “*taps mic* American soldiers fighting in imperialist wars are not brave nor are they fighting for anyone’s freedom,” the post said. “They are mercilessly slaughtering 3rd world civilians and fighting to maintain American hegemony. That is all, thank you! *drops mic*” That rhetoric is blunt and hostile toward U.S. service members, which many conservatives find unacceptable coming from someone tied to city leadership.
Another repost from 2015 read, “You can’t blame muslims for terrorism because they didn’t construct, fund nor train Al-Qaeda,” the user wrote. That line, shared without qualification, shifts responsibility in a way that clashes with common-sense security concerns and the need to confront extremist networks directly. Nuance matters, but so does accountability for what gets amplified on social platforms.
Duwaji also amplified criticism of a major social app after Snapchat added Tel Aviv to a live story feature, resharing posts that included “F*** #TelAviv. Shouldn’t exist in the first place. They’re occupiers. You celebrate them.” One repost added, “And finally. Hey @Snapchat, as you give Israelis an outlet to celebrate their atrocities, youre supporting a genocidal state. Bye. #TelAviv.” Those are forceful statements that many would view as crossing a line into demonization.
Biographically, Duwaji spent early childhood in New Jersey before moving with family to Dubai, and many posts date from her late teens and early twenties. She was 17 in March 2015 when some of the more inflammatory reshared content appeared, and she is now identified as 28 years old; she was born in Houston and identifies as Syrian, and she married Mamdani in 2025. The timing and persistence of these posts mean this is not just a momentary lapse but a pattern that followed her into adulthood.
On the day of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, Duwaji liked an Instagram post showing images from participants who livestreamed footage of the onslaught, which left 1,200 Israelis dead, including young children. She also allegedly liked a February 2024 Instagram post claiming The New York Times’ investigation into sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attack was “fabricated,” and that further inflamed concerns. Those actions have forced a set of straightforward questions about judgment, public accountability, and what voters should expect from people close to their elected officials.
