“To state the obvious: Jesus was Jewish and born in the land of Judea to his Jewish mother, Mary,” a spokesperson for the Israeli Consulate in New York stated.

By JNS

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, will reportedly honor Mary, mother of Jesus, as a “Palestinian woman giving birth under occupation” while co-hosting a women-only Muslim retreat in Corsica, France, that began on Thursday.

Duwaji, 29, departed the United States for Spain before the July 4 holiday to attend the sold-out, five-night “spiritual” retreat organized by The Women Sanctuary.

The retreat is being held at a 15th-century monastery in Corsica, France.

According to the group’s website, participants will explore “the legacy of Mary, the most honored woman in the Qur’an” through lectures, workshops and prayer.

Duwaji is listed as the retreat’s artist-in-residence and will lead an illustration workshop.

Private accommodations ranged from €2,890 (about $3,300) to €4,600 (about $5,250), according to the organizers.

“To state the obvious: Jesus was Jewish and born in the land of Judea to his Jewish mother, Mary,” a spokesperson for the Israeli Consulate in New York stated.

“Any attempt to portray him as being born to a ‘Palestinian’ mother,’ or allude to him being Muslim, is a historical distortion and a cynical and gross attempt to exploit his story and use it to serve contemporary political goals.”

“New York City’s first lady, Rama Duwaji, is pushing a false and dangerous anti-Israel narrative,” the spokesperson said. “Jesus lived centuries before the founding of Islam, and applying contemporary political identities to him distorts the historical record.”

“Saying Jesus is Palestinian is as ridiculous as saying the New York Knicks lost the 2026 NBA Championship,” the spokesperson added.

Trisha Posner, founder of Antisemitism Watch, questioned whether anyone would tell Duwaji “that the mother of Jesus, Mary, was a Jewish woman from Judea.”

“I’d tell her myself, but she conveniently deleted her X account to scrub her history of celebrating Oct. 7,” Posner wrote. “What a shame.”

“They can’t erase history, no matter how hard they try,” she added. “But it does tell you who they really are.”

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“Nothing says ‘America 250’ quite like skipping the celebration for a Mediterranean vacation.”

By World Israel News Staff

As Americans across the country marked the nation’s 250th anniversary over the July 4 weekend, New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji spent the holiday at an Islamic “spiritual wellness” retreat on the Spanish island of Mallorca, drawing sharp criticism from elected officials and renewing attention on the political views of New York City’s first family.

According to the New York Post, Duwaji departed for Spain ahead of the Independence Day celebrations and was photographed waiting at a United Airlines gate before boarding her flight.

The trip quickly became a flashpoint. Queens Councilwoman Joann Ariola told the Post, “Nothing says ‘America 250’ quite like skipping the celebration for a Mediterranean vacation. I am not surprised because she has made her hatred for America very evident.”

Staten Island Councilman Frank Morano also criticized the timing of the trip.

“It’s disappointing that the first lady chose to be overseas instead of taking part in one of the biggest civic events our city and country will mark this year,” Morano said.

Conservative commentator Arynne Wexler, who published the airport photos on X, mocked the contrast between the mayor’s public messaging and his wife’s travel plans.

“Funny how when Zohran Mamdani was telling New Yorkers to lower their AC his wife Rama Duwaji was boarding a flight to party in Mallorca,” Wexler wrote. She added, “Reminder that I can’t tag her because she deleted her account after her insanely offensive tweets were discovered. Champagne socialists.”

Funny how when @ZohranKMamdani was telling New Yorkers to lower their AC his wife Rama Duwaji was boarding a flight to party in Mallorca

Reminder that I can’t tag her because she deleted her account after her insanely offensive tweets were discovered

Champagne socialists pic.twitter.com/aD1XmiMXNe

— Arynne Wexler (@ArynneWexler) July 3, 2026

Duwaji has faced repeated scrutiny over her online activity and activism. Earlier this year, reports resurfaced showing she had “liked” a number of pro-Palestinian social media posts following the October 7 Hamas massacre.

She also illustrated a literary work included in a collection edited by Palestinian activist Susan Abulhawa, who has made inflammatory statements about Jews and Israel. After years-old social media posts containing racial, homophobic, and other offensive remarks resurfaced, Duwaji deleted her X account.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has consistently defended his wife as a private citizen with no role in his administration, noting that some of her social media activity predated both their marriage and his mayoral campaign.

Mamdani himself has remained at the center of controversy over his positions on Israel and the Jewish community.

He has refused to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” arguing that it should not automatically be interpreted as a call for violence, while continuing to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and repeatedly accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.

Shortly before the July 4 holiday, Mamdani also came under fire after referring to members of the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC as “monsters” while discussing the influence of money in politics, comments that drew condemnation from Jewish leaders and elected officials.

The first lady’s absence from America’s 250th birthday celebration, combined with the mayor’s recent rhetoric and the couple’s record on Israel-related issues, added another chapter to the ongoing debate surrounding New York City’s new first family.

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Shiraz said the tone of the conversation shifted after she introduced herself as Miss Israel.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Melanie Shiraz, Miss Israel 2025, said she had a brief and tense interaction with New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji at a Brooklyn coffee shop after introducing herself as an Israeli beauty queen visiting the city for an event at the Israeli consulate, according to the New York Post.

Shiraz said the encounter took place Sunday at a café in Williamsburg while she was in New York for consular events connected to her advocacy work.

The 27-year-old, who previously studied at UC Berkeley and worked in Silicon Valley before returning to Tel Aviv, said she recognized Duwaji seated nearby and approached her.

According to Shiraz, the interaction became uncomfortable once she disclosed her identity.

“As soon as I did, she said, ‘Sorry,’ and asked if it was a video and said she didn’t want to anymore,” Shiraz said, describing an attempt to take a photo together.

Shiraz said she then raised concerns over comments and online activity previously linked to Duwaji regarding Israel and Israelis.

“I told her what I think about the stuff she has said online, and that I believe that it’s important to engage in dialogue in which you don’t dehumanize the other side,” Shiraz said. “And she politely brushed me off and then refused to engage anymore.”

A short selfie-style clip later shared by Shiraz reportedly showed the two women briefly in frame before Duwaji appeared to move away from the camera.

Shiraz said the tone of the conversation shifted after she introduced herself as Miss Israel.

“She was polite but clearly changed her tone,” Shiraz said. “I had told her I’m Miss Israel, and then she didn’t want to engage with me anymore.”

The New York Post reported that Duwaji faced criticism last month over resurfaced social media activity related to Israel and the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

According to the report, she later issued a public apology, saying she understood “the hurt” caused by the posts.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office declined to comment on the café encounter, according to the report, while Duwaji did not respond to a request for comment from The California Post. Mamdani has previously said his wife is a “private person who has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall.”

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Rama Duwaji expressed regret for the language she used, but did not say her views had changed.

By World Israel News Staff

The wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a vague apology after her past social media activity, including praising Palestinian terrorism and endorsing posts celebrating the October 7th massacres — but did not disavow the content or say that her views had changed.

Rama Duwaji came under scrutiny after the Washington Free Beacon published old posts from her Tumblr account, many of which were written when she was a teenager.

In them, she expressed admiration for Palestinian hijacker Leila Khaled, referred to Jewish residents of Israel as “occupiers,” and used a racial slur against black people.

Duwaji’s posts also included a conspiracy theory assigning blame to white people for the formation of the Islamic terror group Al-Qaeda.

“You can’t blame Muslims for terrorism because they didn’t construct, fund nor train Al-Qaeda,” one post penned by Duwaji read. “White people did that too.”

In an interview with the art publication Hyperallergic, Duwaji addressed the controversy, apologizing for the language used but stopping short of saying that she no longer held those views.

“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 said.

“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.”

Notably, the apology did not explicitly acknowledge or condemn specific statements, including praise for Khaled or rhetoric targeting Jews.

In her late 20s, Duwaji liked content on Instagram celebrating the October 7 massacres, including posts that referred to widespread sexual violence against civilians and hostages as a “mass hoax.”

The posts contained graphic imagery of Hamas terrorists infiltrating communities in southern Israel during the attacks.

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The first lady of New York could soon be banned from entering Israel over her denials of Hamas sexual atrocities against Israelis and her glorification of anti-Israel terrorists.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

The first lady of New York City could soon be banned from entering Israel over her public support for anti-Israel terrorism and her denials of sexual violence by Hamas terrorists against Israelis during and after the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion.

On Thursday, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism submitted a request to the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority, asking that Rama Duwaji be blacklisted, preventing her from entering Israel.

According to a report by Channel 14, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli penned a letter recommending that Duwaji, the 28-year-old Syrian American illustrator married to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, be denied entry if she attempts to visit Israel.

On the basis of Chikli’s recommendation, Director-General of the Ministry of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism Avi Cohen-Scali contacted the Interior Ministry to formally request an entry ban on Duwaji.

The Diaspora Affairs Ministry based its recommendation to ban Duwaji on her social media activity glorifying the invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 and denying the rapes of Israeli women by Gaza terrorists.

In February 2024, Duwaji liked an Instagram post that claimed that a New York Times investigation into the use of rape and other forms of sexual violence by Gazan terrorists on Oct. 7 was “fabricated.”

Months earlier, she liked a post that lauded the Oct. 7 invasion and featured a photograph of Hamas terrorists tearing down a border fence.

Chikli denounced Duwaji’s comments, calling them an “unprecedented moral low,” adding that Israel “will not allow people like Mrs. Mamdani to enter.”

On Wednesday, The Washington Free Beacon unearthed additional social media posts by Duwaji endorsing and glorifying terrorism.

In 2017, Duwaji posted a photograph of Leila Khaled, a terrorist from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who took part in airline hijackings in 1969 and 1970, along with a quote by Khaled: “If it does good for my cause, I’d be happy to accept death.”

Duwaji also shared an image of a postage stamp from Bangladesh that read: “We salute the valiant freedom fighters of Palestine.”

Other posts condemned American “imperialism” and said that “White People” were to blame for the establishment of the Al Qaeda terror organization.

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The revelation of Duwaji’s illustrations comes after reporting emerged that she liked social media posts celebrating Oct. 7 and calling reports of sexual violence against Israeli civilians a “mass rape hoax.”

By Jon Levine, The Washington Free Beacon

Rama Duwaji, the first lady of New York City, provided a featured illustration for an essay by an author who called Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack “spectacular,” has frequently decried what she describes as “Jewish supremacist vampires,” and said Jewish Israelis are “rootless soulless ghouls.”

Duwaji, wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D., N.Y.), provided a drawing for “A Trail of Soap,” an essay in the collection Every Moment is a Life compiled by Susan Abulhawa.

The essay, published last month in Everything Is Political—an offshoot of self-described “environmental & social justice nonprofit organization” Slow Factory—details a Gazan woman’s attempt to find a bathroom in the territory.

Abulhawa, an author and anti-Israel activist, has a long history of supporting terror and demonizing Jews.

Just days after Oct. 7, she wrote an op-ed in Electronic Intifada in which she called the massacres “a spectacular moment that shocked the world” and insinuated that Israel allowed the attack to happen.

“Whether or not Israel indeed knew of the plans in advance, those few freedom fighters inspired not only the whole of Palestine, but the oppressed masses worldwide, to imagine what freedom looks like; what resistance is possible; and what life is attainable,” she wrote.

Abulhawa has spent the years since Oct. 7 offering thinly veiled attacks against Israelis, “Zionists,” and “Jewish supremacists” on social media.

She wrote in one December post on X that Israelis are “rootless, soulless ghouls” and in September called Israel a “cultureless, rootless human aberration in the form of a manufactured ‘nation,'” adding that “we live in the time of jewish supremacist demons.”

Also in September, Abulhawa described a pro-Israel commentator as a “lying Jewish supremacist cockroach” and bemoaned “Dual loyalty zionists.”

Abulhawa described Israelis as “demonic parasite[s]” in a November post in which she said “Israel must be dismantled if humanity is going to have any chance at a moral future” and in another post said “we will have our revenge someday” against the “sons of satan.”

“Jewish supremacists establishing yet more mechanisms and tentacles to control the minds of your children,” she warned in October 2025.

When the Embassy of Israel condemned Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi for declaring “I am against Judaism,” Abulhawa responded that “No one has the right to judge how Palestinians feel or what they say about their colonizers and tormentors.”

“The whole world is Zionist occupied,” she said in February in another post in which she called believers in Jewish self-determination “parasites.”

There have also been posts about “Jewish supremacist vampires,” “Jewish supremacist ghoul[s],” and “rabid demon[s]” in recent months.

“There isn’t enough hate in the world for them,” she said of Israel just last week in a post also thanking anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Candace Owens.

In other posts, Abulhawa made clear she was not just talking about Israel.

“Wherever they are, they will drag their respective countries into war and financial ruin for their own benefit,” she wrote in January, just a month before the Duwaji collaboration.

“They have a singular loyalty to Jewish supremacy. The ADL and various tentacles of Pax Judaica will swallow us all whole.”

A spokeswoman for Mamdani said in a statement provided to the Washington Free Beacon that Duwaji does not have a relationship with Abulhawa.

“As is common for freelance illustrators, the First Lady was commissioned to illustrate an excerpt of Abulhawa’s book by an outside publisher,” the spokeswoman said.

“She has never engaged with or met Susan Abulhawa, nor had she seen the tweets in question.”

A representative for Abulhawa did not respond to a request for comment.

The revelation of Duwaji’s illustrations comes after reporting emerged that she liked social media posts celebrating Oct. 7 and calling reports of sexual violence against Israeli civilians a “mass rape hoax.”

It also follows Duwaji and Mamdani’s dinner with an anti-Israel radical whose group called for “death to America” and who said “we couldn’t avoid” the Hamas attack.

Slow Factory itself published the celebratory Oct. 7 posts, and Abulhawa defended Duwaji on X during the controversy.

Slow Factory has received mainstream acceptance even as it pushes support for terrorism. The nonprofit partnered with Columbia University on educational programming in the past, the Free Beacon reported, and has worked with companies like Adidas and Gucci.

Abulhawa has similarly found a warm reception within academia. She organizes the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, which in 2023 was held at the University of Pennsylvania.

That event drew scrutiny for featuring openly anti-Semitic speakers like former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters—who claims Jews manipulate U.S. foreign policy and dressed up as a Nazi during a concert in Germany—and Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired from his job at CNN for advocating Israel’s destruction.

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