While nearly 1,200 people lay dead in Israel on October 7, 2023, Rama Duwaji was on Instagram hitting the like button. The posts she engaged with didn't mourn. They celebrated.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent his mayoral campaign distancing himself from the most radical anti-Israel elements of his leftist movement. But an examination of his wife's social media activity reveals she liked multiple Instagram posts cheering on Hamas' Oct. 7 assault, posts that unambiguously celebrated a terrorist attack that saw nearly 1,200 Israelis and foreign workers killed, thousands wounded, 251 civilians and military personnel kidnapped, and numerous episodes of sexual assault.
The Free Press later reported the problem ran deeper than the initial findings suggested, uncovering more than 70 anti-Israel posts Duwaji had liked, including one that dismissed documented Oct. 7 sexual violence as a fabricated hoax.
When asked about it Friday, the mayor of New York City called his wife a private person and moved on.
One post, shared the day of the attack by the Instagram account "The Slow Factory," featured an image of a bulldozer breaching a barrier separating Israel from Gaza and people riding on top of a captured Israeli Defense Force vehicle. Text over the images said, "Breaking the walls of apartheid and military occupation" and "Resisting apartheid since 1948," along with the slogan, "Systemic change for collective liberation."
Duwaji, on that same day and the day after, also liked posts that included the phrase "from the river to the sea," a slogan widely used in pro-Palestinian activism that critics, including many Jewish organizations, say calls for the elimination of Israel.
According to the Daily Caller, the subsequent posts allegedly liked by Duwaji were shared by "The People's Forum" Instagram account, which Jewish Insider described as part of "Shanghai-based Maoist tech mogul Neville 'Roy' Singham's network of nonprofits promoting pro-China, pro-Russia and pro-Iran propaganda."
Then came the detail that erases any remaining benefit of the doubt.
Rama Duwaji allegedly liked a February 2024 Instagram post claiming The New York Times' investigation into sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attack was "fabricated," according to The Free Press. Women were raped and murdered on October 7. Duwaji liked a post calling that a hoax.
The Free Press found that NYC's First Lady liked over 70 Instagram posts containing radical anti-Israel content, including Holocaust inversion and accusations of genocide against Israel. Duwaji also followed anti-Israel accounts, such as Students for Justice in Palestine, and liked posts from a Palestinian activist accused of being a member of a designated foreign terrorist organization.
Asked about all of this at an unrelated press conference in the Bronx, Mamdani didn't deny the likes. He didn't express concern. He reached for a shield.
My wife is the love of my life, and she's also a private person who has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall.
That's it. That's the answer from the mayor of the largest city in the United States, governing roughly one million Jewish residents, on the subject of his wife celebrating a massacre.
The unapologetic tone of the posts Duwaji liked contrasts radically with the mayor's debate-stage messaging on the attack, which characterized Hamas' actions as "war crimes," even as he continually lambasted the Israeli military response. Mamdani publicly condemned the Times Square rally on October 8 for minimizing what he called a massacre. His wife, on that same day, liked posts promoting that very rally.
Not one condemnation of what she engaged with. Not one acknowledgment of what those posts actually said. Not one word for the families of the 251 people who were kidnapped.
The "private person" framing collapses on contact with the facts. Duwaji met Mamdani on a dating app in 2021 and married him in early 2025. She liked these posts using a personal account in her own name, on which she has posted her often-political illustrations and with which the mayor has interacted in the past.
She appeared on New York Magazine's digital cover. She participated in multiple New York Times profiles. And she told New York Magazine directly: "I realized that it was not just his thing but our thing."
Their thing. Her words.
Inflammatory social media activity by members of Mamdani's staff and inner circle, much of it directed at Israel, has caused repeated controversy since he launched his run for mayor last year. Duwaji's Instagram history isn't an outlier in this administration. It's a pattern.
Mamdani is the second New York politician in a single week forced to answer for a spouse's online activity. Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman earlier this week distanced himself from posts his wife reportedly liked on X. Goldman at least offered a direct statement about his wife's views not being his own. Mamdani didn't even go that far. He just declared her off-limits.
The press largely obliged. New York City councilmember Inna Vernikov, a Jewish Republican, criticized the New York Times, asking: "Will the 'paper of record' ask [Mamdani] a single question on this?" The Times later covered the issue, framing the pro-October 7 posts as "support for the Palestinian cause."
Support for the Palestinian cause. That's how the paper of record described liking posts that celebrated a massacre and called the rape of Israeli women a fabrication. Let that sink in.
New York City voters knew who Zohran Mamdani was. He was widely criticized during his campaign, particularly by Jewish leaders, over his anti-Israel comments and positions dating back to his college days. He won anyway.
Now the city has a mayor who calls an attack on Israel a "horrific war crime" in press releases while his wife likes posts describing that same attack as liberation, and the mayor's office won't even say whether the two of them ever discussed it.
Duwaji did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and the mayor's office would not answer questions regarding his feelings about her online activity, or whether they had discussed the Oct. 7 attacks at the time.
A private person, the mayor said. A private person who appeared on magazine covers, sat for major newspaper profiles, told the world their politics were shared, and liked over 70 posts celebrating or rationalizing a terrorist massacre.
The question isn't whether Rama Duwaji speaks for the mayor. The question is why the mayor of New York City doesn't seem troubled by what she said.
