{"id":198878,"date":"2026-04-16T02:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T02:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/198878\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T02:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T02:00:08","slug":"nyc-first-lady-rama-duwaji-apologizes-for-past-harmful-social-media-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/198878\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC first lady Rama Duwaji apologizes for past \u2018harmful\u2019 social media content"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s wife, Rama Duwaji, expressed regret for the \u201churt\u201d caused by her past alarming social media posts \u2013 but failed to directly apologize for the troubling content praising Palestinian terrorists and bashing Israel.<\/p>\n

The Big Apple\u2019s 28-year-old first lady issued the mealy-mouthed mea culpa for a flurry of \u201charmful\u201d posts <\/a>she made on X and Tumblr in her teens and early 20s in a sit-down with Hyperallergic, an arts news outlet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen 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\u2019t excuse it,\u201d Duwaji told the publication.<\/p>\n

\"RamaNYC First Lady Rama Duwaji has apologized for her past social media content, without mentioning her pro-Palestinian terrorists, or anti-Israel posts. WWD via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve 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,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n

Controversial posts unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon last month \u2014 linked to her partly through facial recognition \u2014 showed her inflammatory content dated back to 2013, when she was reportedly 15.<\/p>\n

In one 2015 post, she raged that Tel Aviv \u201cshouldn\u2019t exist in the first place,\u201d<\/a> calling its residents \u201coccupiers,\u201d and dropped the N-word in another post two years earlier.<\/p>\n

On her now-inactive Tumblr, she hailed Palestinian plane hijacker Leila Khaled and members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, while reposting a tirade accusing US service members of \u201cmercilessly slaughtering 3rd world civilians\u201d to maintain \u201cAmerican hegemony.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationOne of Rama\u2019s posts include a pro-Palestine animation credited to her. @NYC_DSA\/TikTok<\/p>\n

A December 2015 repost also blamed white people for the creation of al Qaeda, the outlet reported.<\/p>\n

Before the posts were exposed, Duwaji drew backlash when it emerged she liked Instagram posts celebrating Hamas\u2019 deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, including on claiming that rapes carried out by the terror group against hostages and victims were a \u201cmass hoax.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Duwaji remained silent amid the uproar, her socialist husband, a vocal critic of Israel, jumped to her defense, claiming she is a \u201cprivate person\u201d who holds no formal role in his administration.<\/p>\n

The first lady\u2019s half-hearted apology stopped short of mentioning the exact nature of the explosive posts \u2014 focusing only on the fallout.<\/p>\n

But she reflected on the changes that came with becoming a public figure and being thrust into the spotlight. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis experience has absolutely changed my life,\u201d Duwaji told the publication. \u201cI am still figuring out how it applies to me as an artist and as a person, both thinking of the future and the past.<\/p>\n

My focus isn\u2019t on being a public figure, but continuing my work with care and responsibility, and allowing my art to speak for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s wife, Rama Duwaji, expressed regret for the \u201churt\u201d caused by her past alarming social media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[60,57,9,56,63,65,64,663,4015,58,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-198878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-israel","9":"tag-metro","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-ny","12":"tag-nyc","13":"tag-nyc-headlines","14":"tag-nyc-news","15":"tag-palestine","16":"tag-social-media","17":"tag-us-news","18":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}