Eat, pray, bomb.
New York City’s first lady is currently wrapping up a week as an “artist-in-residence” at a luxury Islamic wellness retreat that has called for the destruction of Israel and openly celebrated Palestinian terrorism, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal.
While Rama Duwaji went from the river to the spa, her husband rolled out his own “strategy to combat antisemitism”—a move widely panned by Jewish New Yorkers.
Duwaji’s attendance at the spiritual wellness gathering in Porto, Portugal was previously reported by the New York Post, but the extremism of the group had not been previously known.
The retreat, known as the Women Sanctuary, is currently in its second session of the month at an 18th-century Portuguese castle that’s now a high-end hotel and event space. The listed price for five nights in a private, single room at the Women’s Sanctuary is $5,216.
Duwaji, who calls herself “a Syrian illustrator and animator” even though she was born in Houston, is believed to be doing Arabic calligraphy at the retreat. She is currently featured on the Women Sanctuary website as a member of the team, bizarrely under the fake name “Karl Holland.”
The sanctuary was started by Rym Nur, a “Paris-based creative,” for women looking to “find sisterhood and spiritual connection through online book clubs, pop-up events and retreats,” according to Vogue Arabia.
The retreats also center heavily on Islam—and are not-too-subtly often held in high-end Southern European locales in Sicily, Spain, and Portugal, lands which were occupied by the Arab caliphates in the Middle Ages. In recent decades, Middle Eastern terror movements like ISIS and al Qaeda have openly aspired to start a new caliphate.
“We gathered to reclaim our history,” the Women Sanctuary said of a recent Mallorca trip.
Photos from Women Sanctuary promotions show women in hijabs and chadors looking peaceful in sun-kissed and beguiling Mediterranean settings.
Nur began doing retreats—which she calls an “ode to Allah”—in September 2023 and from the get-go made the destruction of Israel a front-and-center issue of the programming.
“Abolish the colonial apartheid state of Israel. Free Palestine,” the Women Sanctuary said in an October 2025 Instagram post during a retreat in Corsica (during the Middle Ages, Muslim raiders terrorized Corsican villages and sold the Christian villagers into slavery).
In May 2024, after a lengthy post about supper clubs and “healing meditation,” the sanctuary posted “from the river to the sea,” the notorious call for abolishing all of Israel and its Jews.
In September 2024, the group posted a prayer to Allah asking him to “cleanse Palestine” from its Jewish “oppressors.”
“May the winds of freedom sweep across Palestine, ushering in the complete and rightful restoration of the land’s true stewards,” read yet another Instagram post from March 2025.
“Ceasefire is the beginning. Liberation comes next,” Nur said in March 2024.
The Women Sanctuary frequently holds book clubs and readings—whose subject matter is largely focused on Palestinian grievances.
“Reading ‘Men in the Sun’ from Palestinian author and martyr Ghassan Kanafani, published in 1962 in preparation for our Supper Club for Palestine,” the Women Sanctuary posted in May 2024 from New York City.
Kanafani was a founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a longtime designated terrorist organization in the United States. He was later elected to their political bureau and became their official spokesman during a raft of terrorism perpetrated by the group, according to PalQuest.
After the PFLP hijacked an El-Al flight in 1968, Kanafani led a press conference “boasting” about the achievement, the New York Times reported two years later. In September 1970, the PFLP blew up three jets and took 40 hostages.
“I appreciate the fact that you reject bourgeois moralism and obedience to international law,” Kanafani told an interviewer in 1971 when discussing the bombings.
When asked why he refused to discuss peace with Israelis, he said the idea was like “a conversation between the sword and the neck.”
He was killed by the Mossad in July 1972 in response to his role in the Lod Airport massacre earlier that year, which left 26 people dead, including 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico. Lod Airport, near Tel Aviv, is now Ben Gurion International Airport.
Duwaji, who makes no secret of her hatred for Israel, has in the past expressed her own admiration for the PFLP, including for two glamorous female terrorists, noted plane hijacker Leila Khaled and bus-bomber Shadia Abu Ghazaleh.
In a November 2023 post, the Women Sanctuary announced they would read a book by Ahed Tamimi, a bloodthirsty female Palestinian extremist.
“Ahed Tamimi showed the world more than once what it looks like when you refuse to consent to your own obliteration,” Nur said in November 2023—just weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
Tamimi first came to public prominence in December 2023 at age 16 when she slapped an Israeli soldier and was sentenced to eight months in prison.
After the Hamas massacre, Tamimi was arrested again for posting a statement to Instagram, reading:
We are waiting for you in all the West Bank cities from Hebron to Jenin — we will slaughter you and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke, we will drink your blood and eat your skulls, come on, we are waiting for you.
Tamimi’s comments about Hitler came at the same time the Women Sanctuary singled her out for praise.
She was later freed as part of a prison exchange in return for Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.
It’s unclear exactly what Duwaji did at Porto other than calligraphy—as the group has gone mostly silent on social media since reports of her involvement.
Just days after her husband, Zohran Mamdani, took office as mayor of New York City, Duwaji was in Mallorca with the Women Sanctuary where she led attendees in “ceramic & under-glazing tile workshops,” according to an Instagram post from the time. Duwaji also provided “a reflective illustration workshop on the palm tree and the date,” another post from the same retreat read.
None of it comes cheap.
The location of the Women Sanctuary retreat in Porto is the Paço da Glória—a charming 18th-century castle about an hour’s drive from Porto.
The complex is owned by Rebecca Illing—a self-described “death doula”—who regularly hosts a “family bereavement retreat” on the property in October.
The property also has a “death garden”—which contains the scattered ashes of Illing’s mother and brother and a death-focused supper club series known as the “Last Supper,” the Spectator reported in December 2023.
In 2013, a local blog reported that Illing once hosted a party reenacting the notorious Satanic ball featured in Bulgakov’s novel, The Master and Margarita.
The Taittinger terrorists who attended the Women Sanctuary at Illing’s property will shell out $4,300 for a shared room or $5,260 for a private room. Air and ground transportation are not included. It’s unclear whether the program is covering Duwaji’s expenses.
Creative and intellectual figures who are “in residence” on cruise ships and at retreats are typically comped—and often compensated—for attending. Their flights to and from the event are usually paid for as well. A business class ticket for a nonstop roundtrip flight from New York to Lisbon costs about $10,000-$14,000 on Delta at this time of year.
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