New York City’s first lady Rama Duwaji is wrapping up a week as artist-in-residence at a Portuguese castle retreat whose organizers have repeatedly called for abolishing Israel and “cleansing” the land of Jews.
Duwaji, the wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is finishing a stint with Women Sanctuary at the Paço da Glória near Porto, an 18th-century castle now used as a high-end hotel and event space. The Washington Free Beacon reported she is listed on the group’s site as a team member under the name “Karl Holland” and is believed to be leading Arabic calligraphy work during the second session of the month.
The same organization has a documented record of hard-line anti-Israel messaging on Instagram. That record now sits beside the first lady of America’s largest city, weeks into her husband’s mayoralty and after he rolled out a strategy to combat antisemitism that many Jewish New Yorkers rejected.
Five nights in a private room at the retreat list for roughly $5,216. Shared rooms run about $4,300. The setting is not a community center. It is a Portuguese castle roughly an hour from Porto, marketed as luxury Islamic wellness.
Women Sanctuary did not hide its politics. In an October 2025 post tied to a Corsica retreat, the group wrote, “Abolish the colonial apartheid state of Israel. Free Palestine.”
Just the News reported the same organizers also accused Israel of genocide in that October message and earlier posts pressed for “complete and rightful restoration of the land’s true stewards.”
A September 2024 post offered a prayer asking Allah to “cleanse Palestine” from its Jewish “oppressors.” In May 2024 the account used the slogan “from the river to the sea.” In March 2024, founder Rym Nur wrote, “Ceasefire is the beginning. Liberation comes next.”
The New York Post documented those posts alongside Duwaji’s role as artist-in-residence and the paid retreat price range of $4,300 to $5,260.
Nur, a Paris-based creative who started the sanctuary, launched the retreats in September 2023 as an “ode to Allah.” The program mixes wellness, book clubs, and pop-ups for women. Its political content is not subtle, and it is not new.
In May 2024, Women Sanctuary promoted a New York City supper club with a reading from Ghassan Kanafani’s “Men in the Sun,” calling the author a Palestinian “martyr.” Kanafani helped found and speak for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group long designated a terrorist organization by the United States.
The PFLP’s record includes the 1968 hijacking of an El-Al flight, the September 1970 destruction of three jets and the taking of 40 hostages, and ties to the 1972 Lod Airport massacre that killed 26 people, among them 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico. Israeli intelligence killed Kanafani in July 1972.
In a 1971 interview cited in the reporting, Kanafani rejected “bourgeois moralism and obedience to international law” and compared talk of peace to “a conversation between the sword and the neck.”
Nur also praised Ahed Tamimi in November 2023, weeks after the Hamas massacre of October 7. Tamimi later posted a statement, carried by AP and quoted in the Free Beacon piece, threatening Jews with slaughter and invoking Hitler. She had earlier served eight months after slapping an Israeli soldier as a teenager and was later freed in a prisoner exchange for hostages taken by Hamas.
That is the intellectual company the retreat keeps. Duwaji’s presence puts New York’s first lady inside it.
Porto is not Duwaji’s first turn with the group. Just days after Mamdani took office, she appeared with Women Sanctuary in Mallorca leading ceramic and under-glazing tile workshops and a “reflective illustration workshop on the palm tree and the date.” The group posted, “We gathered to reclaim our history.”
That Mallorca trip drew earlier notice when the first lady skipped America’s 250th birthday events for a $3,400 Islamic retreat on the Spanish island while her husband stayed in the city.
Breitbart reported she was seen at Newark Airport for an eight-hour flight to Palma, was listed as artist-in-residence for a “Plants of the Quran” retreat, and was also scheduled for a “Mary in the Quran” session in Corsica. Queens Councilwoman Joann Ariola said she was “not surprised” given Duwaji’s record of hostility toward America.
Prior Free Beacon reporting, cited in the current piece, says Duwaji has made no secret of her hostility toward Israel and has expressed admiration for PFLP figures Leila Khaled, a plane hijacker, and Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, a bus bomber. She calls herself a Syrian illustrator and animator and was born in Houston.
Coverage of her travel has become a running story, including a third luxury Islamic retreat of 2026 in Portugal and earlier plans that put City Hall at odds with the police department over overseas security.
The Porto property belongs to Rebecca Illing, who has described herself as a “death doula.” Reporting on the estate notes a “death garden” with scattered ashes of her mother and brother, a “Last Supper” death-themed supper club, and a 2013 local blog account of a party reenacting the Satanic ball from Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita.”
Women Sanctuary’s own site features Duwaji under the false name “Karl Holland.” The Free Beacon notes it is unclear whether the program is covering her expenses, unclear exactly what she did in Porto beyond calligraphy, and notes the group went largely silent on social media after reports of her involvement.
Business-class round-trip flights from New York to Lisbon on Delta can run $10,000 to $14,000 at this time of year. Pair that with a five-night private room north of $5,000 and the optics write themselves: elite travel, ideological programming, and a first lady of New York on the roster.
Her other foreign travel has already triggered institutional pushback. The NYPD refused to send officers with the mayor’s wife on a planned trip to Syria and Lebanon, and the mayor later blamed staff after that denial became public.
Mamdani took office and quickly produced a strategy to combat antisemitism. Jewish New Yorkers widely panned it. Now his wife is closing a week inside a retreat whose feed has called for abolishing the Jewish state, used “from the river to the sea,” and prayed for a cleansing of Jewish “oppressors.”
City Hall does not get to separate the mayor’s message from the first lady’s associations when those associations are public, repeated, and paid at luxury rates. Voters who wanted seriousness on antisemitism are watching the people closest to power choose their company.
Women Sanctuary’s own words are the record. “Abolish the colonial apartheid state of Israel.” “Cleanse Palestine.” “Liberation comes next.” “True stewards.” Those lines do not require translation. They require distance from anyone who holds high public office in New York, or from the spouse who shares the platform.
Duwaji’s earlier Mallorca workshops and the current Porto residency show continuity, not accident. The mayor’s office push for NYPD escorts on other overseas travel only sharpens the contrast: heavy official interest in her movements abroad, little apparent interest in the political character of the hosts.
Rym Nur’s project markets spiritual recovery and sisterhood. Its posts market the end of Israel as a Jewish state. New York’s first lady has now been an artist-in-residence in that project more than once, including under a false website name the organizers have not explained.
Taxpayers and Jewish families in the five boroughs did not elect a first lady to lend prestige to groups that pray for the land to be scrubbed of Jews. They expect the mayor’s household to treat that line as disqualifying, not as a calligraphy booking.
When the first lady’s retreat partners call for Israel’s abolition, the mayor’s antisemitism binder is just paper.
