New York City’s first lady, Rama Duwaji, glorified terrorist violence in a wide range of posts made on social media when she was a teenager and in her early 20s, celebrating members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group and the First Intifada, a Washington Free Beacon review of her old X and Tumblr accounts found.
Duwaji, 28, posted a photo to her Tumblr account in September 2017, when she would have been 20 years old, of the infamous Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled. Under the username “diimashq,” she echoed one of Khaled’s most famous statements.
“If it does good for my cause, I’d be happy to accept death,” the caption read.
Khaled, a longtime member of the PFLP, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, participated in plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970. Between the two hijackings, she underwent several cosmetic surgery procedures to disguise her identity. In the 1970 hijacking, Khaled threatened to detonate a grenade unless the pilots let her into the cockpit. Today, she is revered by terrorists and their allies as the first woman to hijack a plane.
Duwaji was in her late teens and early 20s when she made the majority of the posts, and the accounts with which she made them appear to be inactive now. They came at a time when she was living in the Middle East. While she is of Syrian descent, Duwaji spent her early childhood in New Jersey. Her family moved to Dubai in 2006, and Duwaji eventually transferred from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar to the school’s Richmond campus.
In the posts, Duwaji celebrated other members of the terrorist PFLP as well. In March 2015, when she was 17, New York City’s future first lady reposted a tweet on International Women’s Day praising the terrorist Shadia Abu Ghazaleh. It shows a photo of Ghazaleh, a leading PFLP figure who participated in the bombing of an Israeli bus and led several other terrorist attacks, posing with a rifle. She was killed in 1968 when a bomb she was building in her home—which she intended to use to blow up a building in Tel Aviv—exploded accidentally.
The late terrorist is considered a “martyr” in Palestinian society and is the namesake of a school in Gaza.
“shadia abu ghazaleh, first palestinian woman to fight in resistance after 1967 occupation #InternationalWomensDay,” the post read.
Duwaji posted another photo on her Tumblr account in December 2017, this one showing a keffiyeh-clad Palestinian sewing a flag.
“Photography: ‘A Palestinian demonstrator sews a Palestinian Liberation Organization flag before a protest during the first Intifada’, February, 1988,” the caption reads.
The First Intifada, a terrorist uprising during which Hamas was established, lasted from 1987 to 1993 and saw Palestinians kill about 200 Israelis and hundreds of other Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the Jewish state.
In September 2017, Duwaji shared an image of a Bangladeshi postage stamp reading, “We salute the valiant freedom fighters of Palestine.”
Duwaji reposted an attack against U.S. service members on her Tumblr in July 2015.
“*taps mic* American soldiers fighting in imperialist wars are not brave nor are they fighting for anyone’s freedom,” the post read. “They are mercilessly slaughtering 3rd world civilians and fighting to maintain American hegemony. That is all, thank you! *drops mic*”
In December of that year, she reposted another Tumblr user who said white people created al Qaeda.
“You can’t blame muslims for terrorism because they didn’t construct, fund nor train Al-Qaeda,” that user wrote. “White People did that too.”
In 2015, the social media app Snapchat added Tel Aviv to its “live story” feature, showing user-submitted photos and videos from a particular location. The decision sparked a backlash from anti-Israel users, including Duwaji, who retweeted a series of posts from an account called @butterbooter.
“But in all reality, @Snapchat has disappointed me. Fuck #TelAviv. Shouldn’t exist in the first place. They’re occupiers. You celebrate them,” read a post retweeted by Duwaji.
“And finally. Hey @Snapchat, as you give Israelis an outlet to celebrate their atrocities, youre supporting a genocidal state. Bye. #TelAviv.”
On Feb 2., 2013, Duwaji—who is not black—used the N-word in a post on X. She was 15 years old at the time.
“@_AlyaF Helllll yeah, nigga. Super duper genius* excuse you,” she posted.
A representative for Mamdani did not respond to a request for comment.
The revelations of the first lady’s social media activity come after several similar scandals. Duwaji provided a featured illustration for an essay by Susan Abulhawa, an author who called Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack “spectacular,” has bemoaned what she calls “Jewish supremacist vampires,” and said Jewish Israelis are “rootless soulless ghouls,” the Free Beacon reported. Mamdani called Abulhawa’s rhetoric “reprehensible” in a press conference and a spokeswoman told the Free Beacon that Duwaji had “never engaged with or met” Abulhawa.
Earlier in March, news emerged that Duwaji had liked a number of Instagram posts celebrating Oct. 7, including one calling reports of sexual violence against Israeli civilians a “mass rape hoax.” The mayor and his wife also dined this month with an anti-Israel Columbia activist, Mahmoud Khalil, who said “we couldn’t avoid” the Hamas attack and that it is “very racist” to ask him to condemn the terrorist organization.
The Free Beacon was able to link Duwaji to the accounts through several means. Both of them mention her name in some form, and a different X user tagged Duwaji’s account alongside an image of her that the Free Beacon verified with publicly available facial recognition technology. The accounts also mention Duwaji’s birthday and the name of her pet cat.
On June 30, 2012, Duwaji posted on Tumblr marking her birthday, June 30. A March 2013 post included pictures of several articles of clothing with the caption “cute n classy by r-duwaji.” In an April 2015 X post, Duwaji mentioned a cat called Mishka—the same name as her family’s cat in Dubai, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Another post from the account mentioned visits to Syria, New York, and Texas, all locations where Duwaji has lived or has family.
The Tumblr account, where much of the most inflammatory content was posted, has long fallen into disuse, and the website has allowed the page to become overrun with pornographic content. Tumblr allows usernames to be released to the public after one year of inactivity.
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