Rama Duwaji, the wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, liked multiple Instagram posts celebrating Hamas's October 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis, according to a report from Jewish Insider. The posts she engaged with "unambiguously celebrated the terrorist attack," which killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and foreign workers, wounded thousands, and saw 251 people kidnapped.
Duwaji, a Syrian-American artist, also liked two posts from protests organized in Times Square just one day after the attack. She did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Jewish Insider.
According to Fox News, the report lands as Mamdani occupies the highest office in America's largest city, raising pointed questions about just how far his personal orbit extends into the radical anti-Israel circles he spent his mayoral campaign trying to shake.
According to Jewish Insider, one of the posts Duwaji liked was shared on October 7 itself by an Instagram account called "The Slow Factory," which describes itself as "a school, knowledge partner and climate innovation organization" that aims to "center the voices and ideas of the Global Majority (Black, Indigenous, and other people of color) to share their knowledge outside the boundaries of institutions & oppressive systems."
The content she engaged with included language like "Breaking the walls of apartheid and military occupation," "Resisting apartheid since 1948," and "Systemic change for collective liberation." One post referenced "if and when the occupation forces retaliate against this resistance," framing the people of Israel as aggressors and Palestinians as victims who should not be "punished for wanting freedom from apartheid."
On October 7, 2023, the only "resistance" happening was the slaughter of civilians at a music festival and in their homes. That's what these posts were cheering. There is no ambiguity to launder here.
The Times Square protest posts Duwaji liked were organized by The People's Forum, an organization Jewish Insider has linked to "Shanghai-based Maoist tech mogul Neville 'Roy' Singham's network of nonprofits promoting pro-China, pro-Russia and pro-Iran propaganda." The posts included the phrase "from the river to the sea," which Jewish Insider noted is "often understood as calling for the total elimination of Israel from the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea."
Jewish Insider reported that Mamdani "spent the mayoral campaign distancing himself from the most radical anti-Israel elements of his leftist movement." He even publicly criticized the Times Square rally at the time for "making light" of Hamas' massacre of civilians.
So Mamdani condemned the rally. His wife liked the posts promoting it.
That contradiction sits at the center of this story. No one is suggesting a spouse must answer for every click on a phone screen. But these weren't stray likes on cooking videos. These were posts celebrating the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust, engaged with on the very day it happened and in the immediate aftermath. The pattern is specific, the timing unmistakable.
When Jewish Insider pressed the mayor's office, his team refused to answer questions about his feelings on Duwaji's online activity or whether they had discussed the October 7 attacks at the time. Instead, a City Hall spokesperson offered a canned statement:
"Mayor Mamdani has been clear and consistent: Hamas is a terrorist organization, October 7th was a horrific war crime, and he has condemned that violence unequivocally."
Clear and consistent is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. You don't get credit for condemning an atrocity "unequivocally" while refusing to address the fact that your own wife was digitally applauding the people who committed it.
This is a pattern New Yorkers have seen before from the progressive left. Publicly, the language is measured. The condemnations hit the right notes. The campaign trail version of the politician knows exactly which words to use for which audience. But the private orbit tells a different story: the social media likes, the organizational ties, the circles that never quite get disavowed with the same energy they get embraced.
Mamdani's carefully constructed public posture on Israel was always going to be tested. The question was never whether the mask would slip but where. It turns out the answer was one Instagram account over, on his wife's phone, on the day 1,200 people were murdered.
Nearly 1,200 killed. Thousands wounded. 251 kidnapped. Episodes of sexual assault are documented by investigators. That is what those posts celebrated. That is what earned a double-tap.
The mayor's office wants this to be about one man's stated position. The report makes it about what his household actually endorsed when nobody was supposed to be watching.