Rama Duwaji’s post celebrating a PFLP plane hijacker came in her early 20s
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s (D.) wife, First Lady Rama Duwaji, offered a belated apology for using slurs for black and gay people on an old social media account. She did not apologize for several posts sent in her early 20s glorifying Palestinian terrorists.
“When a tabloid recently published old tweets I wrote as a teenager, I felt a lot of shame being confronted with language I used that is so harmful to others; being 15 doesn’t excuse it,” she told the online magazine Hyperallergic. “I’ve read and seen a lot of what others have had to say in response, and I understand the hurt I caused and am truly sorry.” The Washington Free Beacon first reported on Duwaji’s past statements last month, including her use of the n-word.
Duwaji’s remarks are revealing for what she did not apologize for. Though Duwaji was a teenager when she posted the slurs, she was in her early 20s when she shared posts lauding terrorists like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (PFLP) Leila Khaled, who participated in plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970.
In September 2017, at the age of 20, Duwaji shared a photo of Khaled to her Tumblr account featuring the quote, “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death.” In another September 2017 post, Duwaji shared an image of a Bangladeshi postage stamp reading, “We salute the valiant freedom fighters of Palestine” and showing a man wearing a keffiyeh and holding a gun.
Months later, Duwaji posted a photo of a “Palestinian demonstrator” sewing a “Palestine Liberation Organization flag before a protest during the first Intifada.” In 2015, at the age of 17, Duwaji reposted a tweet honoring PFLP terrorist Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, who bombed an Israeli bus, as the “first Palestinian woman to fight in resistance after 1967 occupation.” Duwaji did not attribute her Ghazaleh post to youthful ignorance in her interview with Hyperallergic.
Other posts from the since-deleted accounts show Duwaji using the n-word and referring to “fgts.”
“@_AlyaF Helllll yeah, nigga. Super duper genius* excuse you,” Duwaji posted in February 2013.
“Whyyyyyy are all these fgts following meeeeeeeee,” she added in June that same year.
Duwaji’s husband, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has not commented on the first lady’s old posts even as the story has received attention from mainstream outlets like Politico and CNN. He did, however, weigh in after the Free Beacon reported that Duwaji provided illustrations for an essay by Susan Abulhawa, an author who called Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack “spectacular” and blasted Jewish Israelis as “vampires” and “rootless soulless ghouls.” The mayor condemned Abulhawa’s rhetoric as “reprehensible” after the Free Beacon report.
Mamdani has, for the most part, refrained from discussing his wife’s inflammatory views. After stories emerged showing that Duwaji had liked Instagram posts celebrating Oct. 7 and calling reports of sexual violence against Israeli civilians a “mass rape hoax,” the mayor argued that his wife is a “private person.”
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