New York City’s first girl, Rama Duwaji, glorified terrorist violence in a variety of posts made on social media when she was a teen and in her early 20s, celebrating members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group and the First Intifada, a Washington Free Beacon evaluation of her previous X and Tumblr accounts discovered.
Duwaji, 28, posted a photo to her Tumblr account in September 2017, when she would have been 20 years previous, of the notorious Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled. Under the username “diimashq,” she echoed considered one of Khaled’s most well-known statements.
“If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death,” the caption learn.
Khaled, a longtime member of the PFLP, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, participated in airplane hijackings in 1969 and 1970. Between the 2 hijackings, she underwent a number of beauty surgical procedure procedures to disguise her id. In the 1970 hijacking, Khaled threatened to detonate a grenade until the pilots let her into the cockpit. Today, she is revered by terrorists and their allies as the primary lady to hijack a airplane.
Duwaji was in her late teenagers and early 20s when she made nearly all of the posts, and the accounts with which she made them seem like inactive now. They got here at a time when she was dwelling within the Middle East. While she is of Syrian descent, Duwaji spent her early childhood in New Jersey. Her household moved to Dubai in 2006, and Duwaji ultimately transferred from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar to the college’s Richmond campus.
In the posts, Duwaji celebrated different members of the terrorist PFLP as properly. In March 2015, when she was 17, New York City’s future first girl reposted a tweet on International Women’s Day praising the terrorist Shadia Abu Ghazaleh. It exhibits a photograph of Ghazaleh, a number one PFLP determine who participated within the bombing of an Israeli bus and led a number of different terrorist assaults, posing with a rifle. She was killed in 1968 when a bomb she was constructing in her house—which she meant to make use of to explode a constructing in Tel Aviv—exploded accidentally.
The late terrorist is considered a “martyr” in Palestinian society and is the namesake of a college in Gaza.
“shadia abu ghazaleh, first palestinian woman to fight in resistance after 1967 occupation #InternationalWomensDay,” the publish learn.
Duwaji posted one other photograph on her Tumblr account in December 2017, this one exhibiting a keffiyeh-clad Palestinian stitching a flag.
“Photography: ‘A Palestinian demonstrator sews a Palestinian Liberation Organization flag before a protest during the first Intifada’, February, 1988,” the caption reads.
The First Intifada, a terrorist rebellion throughout which Hamas was established, lasted from 1987 to 1993 and noticed Palestinians kill about 200 Israelis and hundreds of different Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the Jewish state.
In September 2017, Duwaji shared an image of a Bangladeshi postage stamp studying, “We salute the valiant freedom fighters of Palestine.”
Duwaji reposted an assault in opposition to U.S. service members on her Tumblr in July 2015.
“*taps mic* American soldiers fighting in imperialist wars are not brave nor are they fighting for anyone’s freedom,” the publish learn. “They are mercilessly slaughtering 3rd world civilians and fighting to maintain American hegemony. That is all, thank you! *drops mic*”
In December of that yr, she reposted one other Tumblr consumer who mentioned white individuals created al Qaeda.
“You can’t blame muslims for terrorism because they didn’t construct, fund nor train Al-Qaeda,” that consumer wrote. “White People did that too.”
In 2015, the social media app Snapchat added Tel Aviv to its “live story” characteristic, exhibiting user-submitted images and movies from a specific location. The determination sparked a backlash from anti-Israel customers, together with Duwaji, who retweeted a collection of posts from an account referred to as @butterbooter.
“But in all reality, @Snapchat has disappointed me. Fuck #TelAviv. Shouldn’t exist in the first place. They’re occupiers. You celebrate them,” learn a publish retweeted by Duwaji.
“And finally. Hey @Snapchat, as you give Israelis an outlet to celebrate their atrocities, youre supporting a genocidal state. Bye. #TelAviv.”
On Feb 2., 2013, Duwaji—who just isn’t black—used the N-word in a publish on X. She was 15 years previous on the time.
“@_AlyaF Helllll yeah, nigga. Super duper genius* excuse you,” she posted.
A consultant for Mamdani didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The revelations of the primary girl’s social media exercise come after a number of related scandals. Duwaji offered a featured illustration for an essay by Susan Abulhawa, an creator who referred to as Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault “spectacular,” has bemoaned what she calls “Jewish supremacist vampires,” and mentioned Jewish Israelis are “rootless soulless ghouls,” the Free Beacon reported. Mamdani referred to as Abulhawa’s rhetoric “reprehensible” in a press convention and a spokeswoman informed the Free Beacon that Duwaji had “never engaged with or met” Abulhawa.
Earlier in March, news emerged that Duwaji had appreciated quite a lot of Instagram posts celebrating Oct. 7, together with one calling studies of sexual violence in opposition to Israeli civilians a “mass rape hoax.” The mayor and his spouse additionally dined this month with an anti-Israel Columbia activist, Mahmoud Khalil, who mentioned “we couldn’t avoid” the Hamas assault and that it’s “very racist” to ask him to sentence the terrorist group.
The Free Beacon was in a position to hyperlink Duwaji to the accounts by way of a number of means. Both of them point out her identify in some type, and a special X consumer tagged Duwaji’s account alongside a picture of her that the Free Beacon verified with publicly obtainable facial recognition know-how. The accounts additionally point out Duwaji’s birthday and the identify of her pet cat.
On June 30, 2012, Duwaji posted on Tumblr marking her birthday, June 30. A March 2013 publish included footage of a number of articles of clothes with the caption “cute n classy by r-duwaji.” In an April 2015 X publish, Duwaji mentioned a cat referred to as Mishka—the same name as her household’s cat in Dubai, in keeping with the Wall Street Journal.
Another post from the account talked about visits to Syria, New York, and Texas, all areas the place Duwaji has lived or has household.
The Tumblr account, the place a lot of essentially the most inflammatory content material was posted, has lengthy fallen into disuse, and the website has allowed the web page to develop into overrun with pornographic content material. Tumblr permits usernames to be launched to the general public after one yr of inactivity.
