Rama Duwaji, wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, broke her public silence this week with an apology for social media posts she made as a teenager, posts that included racial and anti-gay slurs. But the apology, published Wednesday in an interview with the online publication Hyperallergic, stopped well short of addressing a longer trail of anti-Israel content that has dogged the city's first lady since her husband took office in January.
Duwaji told Hyperallergic she felt "a lot of shame" after a tabloid resurfaced old tweets. She said she understood the hurt she caused and called herself "truly sorry." What she did not address, and what her critics have been far more focused on, are separate posts from her late teens and early twenties that praised Palestinian militants, glorified members of a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and dismissed the existence of Tel Aviv.
The gap between what Duwaji apologized for and what she left out tells its own story. And it raises a pointed question for the mayor's office: Does New York's first lady regret only the slurs, or also the years of content that celebrated political violence against Israel?
In the Hyperallergic interview, Duwaji framed her apology around language she used at age fifteen. Fox News Digital reported on her remarks:
"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 added that she had read what others said in response and understood the damage. "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," Duwaji said. She also signaled she wanted to move on, saying her focus was on "continuing my work with care and responsibility, and allowing my art to speak for itself."
That may satisfy some. But the controversy around Duwaji has never been primarily about teenage slurs. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Duwaji did not apologize for separate posts from her late teens and early twenties that praised or highlighted figures tied to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, including plane hijacker Leila Khaled. The PFLP is a U.S. and globally designated terrorist organization.
The Beacon's March investigation revealed a pattern that went well beyond adolescent vulgarity. An X account the outlet connected to Duwaji had, in March 2015, when Duwaji was seventeen, reposted a photo of Shadia Abu Ghazaleh with a caption that extolled her as a resistance fighter. Ghazaleh was a member of the PFLP who participated in a bombing of an Israeli bus and died in 1968 when a bomb she had planned to use on a building in Tel Aviv exploded in her home.
The same investigation found that the account associated with Duwaji had allegedly reposted another user's statement that Tel Aviv "shouldn't even exist in the first place." As previously reported, Duwaji's social media history included content celebrating PFLP militants and a plane hijacker, material far more politically charged than the teenage slurs she now says she regrets.
Shortly after the Beacon published its findings, the X account associated with Duwaji was deleted.
The first wave of public criticism hit in February, just one month after Mamdani's inauguration. Duwaji came under fire for contributing an illustration to an essay about a Gaza refugee camp. That essay was written by Susan Abulhawa, an author who called Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel "a spectacular moment that shocked the world." The attack, carried out at a music festival near Kibbutz Re'im, killed more than 1,200 people.
Abulhawa's social media posts, which Fox News Digital reported are still active, have referred to Israelis as "rootless, soulless ghouls" and "Jewish supremacist demons." That is the author whose work Duwaji illustrated.
Mayor Mamdani addressed the matter in March. He condemned Abulhawa's language but defended his wife's involvement, casting the illustration as a routine freelance job arranged through a middleman.
"I think that that rhetoric is patently unacceptable. I think it's reprehensible. And as is common for freelance illustrators, the First Lady was commissioned to illustrate an excerpt of a book by a third party. She has never engaged with or met with the author, nor had she seen the tweets that you're referring to."
That defense has a certain mechanical plausibility. Freelance illustrators do take assignments through intermediaries. But it does not explain the broader record, a record that includes years of anti-Israel posts, liked content, and engagement with material sympathetic to designated terrorist organizations. As we have previously covered, Duwaji also faced backlash for liking Instagram posts that appeared to celebrate the October 7 massacre, a pattern that mainstream media largely declined to pursue.
The mayor has tried to thread a narrow needle. He has called his wife "someone of incredible integrity" and said he is proud of her, the Washington Free Beacon reported. He has also described Duwaji as a private person with no formal City Hall role, a framing designed to create distance between the mayor's office and her online history.
But as earlier reporting noted, the "private person" label sits uneasily next to Duwaji's public appearances, magazine features, and press interviews. She appeared alongside Mamdani at his ceremonial inauguration at City Hall on January 1 and at a news conference at Gracie Mansion on January 12. The Texas-born Syrian-American artist has been described as an outspoken critic of Israel throughout her husband's political career.
The Associated Press reported that Mamdani acknowledged the scrutiny of his wife's online activity comes with his decision to run for mayor. That is a more honest framing than the "private person" defense. When you occupy Gracie Mansion, your spouse's public record is fair game, especially when that record touches on terrorism and the security of a close American ally.
The New York Post reported that Duwaji's resurfaced posts included a 2015 statement that Tel Aviv "shouldn't exist in the first place," Tumblr content praising Leila Khaled and PFLP members, and liked Instagram posts celebrating Hamas's October 7 attack and disputing rape allegations tied to that assault. None of that appeared in her apology.
Duwaji told Hyperallergic her focus "isn't on being a public figure." But the posts in question were not private journal entries. They were published on public platforms, shared with followers, and, in the case of the liked Instagram posts, engaged with content that celebrated mass murder.
An Oct. 7 survivor has already confronted Duwaji over a liked post that dismissed Hamas sexual violence as a "mass hoax." That confrontation did not produce a public reckoning. This week's carefully worded interview with a sympathetic arts publication does not produce one either.
Fox News Digital contacted a representative of Mayor Mamdani for comment and did not immediately receive a response. Breitbart noted that the resurfaced posts included Duwaji's use of an anti-gay slur and a racial slur, the material she chose to address, alongside the anti-Israel and pro-militant content she did not.
Rama Duwaji's apology follows a familiar script. Acknowledge the least defensible material, teenage slurs that offend nearly everyone. Express shame. Invoke youth. Pivot to your art. And hope the press accepts the gesture as sufficient.
What the apology leaves untouched is the material that actually matters to New York City governance: a sustained record of anti-Israel hostility, engagement with content celebrating a terrorist attack that killed more than 1,200 people, and admiration for members of a designated terrorist group. Those posts were not written at fifteen. They span years. And they belong to the woman who lives in Gracie Mansion.
Mayor Mamdani called Abulhawa's rhetoric "reprehensible." He has not used that word for his wife's own posts. He has not explained why the X account was deleted after the Beacon's investigation. And he has not addressed the liked Instagram content tied to October 7.
Saying sorry for the easy part is not accountability. It is damage control, and New Yorkers deserve to know the difference.
