Mamdani’s Wife Stands With ‘Abolish Israel’ Activists
Rama Duwaji spent part of September in Portugal as an artist-in-residence with The Women Sanctuary, leading calligraphy work at a retreat built around Islamic art, history and women’s spiritual life.
The retreat itself is not especially mysterious. The Women Sanctuary advertises programs centered on Islamic calligraphy, Muslim history, art workshops and religious reflection. Duwaji’s participation became political because the organization has also been outspoken about Palestine.
In earlier social-media posts highlighted by recent reporting, the group described Israel as a colonial apartheid state, accused it of genocide in Gaza and called for Palestinian liberation. One post used the line “Abolish the colonial apartheid state of Israel.” Duwaji did not write those posts, and attending the retreat does not make every statement by its organizers hers.
But she also did not run from the association.
That is where the contrast with Zohran Mamdani is real. Mamdani remains one of the most prominent American elected officials critical of Israel, but he is now governing New York City. His language has become the language of an administration: measured, negotiated and built to survive pressure from institutions that have spent years treating Palestine as a political liability.
On September 29, Mamdani’s administration released New York City’s new strategy to combat antisemitism. It doubles Partners Against the Hate grants to $6.4 million, adds $1 million for security at synagogues and other houses of worship, expands Holocaust and Jewish-history education, and ties the program to a $26 million city investment in hate-crime prevention.
The plan does not abandon Mamdani’s criticism of Israel. It does show what office does to political speech: every sentence has to serve several constituencies at once.
Duwaji has no such obligation. She is not a city official, does not set foreign policy and does not need to turn her personal cultural life into an extension of City Hall. That gives her room to remain in Palestinian and Muslim spaces that a conventional political operation would probably tell her to avoid.
That pressure is familiar in New York politics. Pamphlets has already covered the fight over AIPAC money and pro-Israel pressure inside Democratic politics. The normal demand is not merely that politicians oppose antisemitism — they should — but that Palestinians and their supporters constantly prove their respectability before they are allowed to speak about occupation, displacement or Gaza.
Duwaji’s response has mostly been to keep doing her work.
There is no need to turn that into a grand doctrine. The facts are enough: she attended a Muslim women’s retreat whose organizers have taken a hard pro-Palestine line, and she did not publicly disown them when the predictable backlash arrived.
For people who watched pro-Palestine politicians become more cautious once they entered office, that is worth noticing.
Mamdani has a government to run. Duwaji does not. On Palestine, that may leave her freer to say less — and concede less.
Cover photo: NYC Mayor’s Office, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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