New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji, wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has faced renewed public scrutiny following reports by The Free Press detailing Spotify playlists on her account that contained explicit anti-Israel and anti-police messages. The revelations, which surfaced on Wednesday, represent the latest in a series of controversies surrounding her online activity since her husband took office in January 2026.
"The struggle for Palestinian liberation was at the core of my politics and continues to be." — Zohran Mamdani, New York City Mayor
According to the Free Press, one playlist on Duwaji's Spotify account was titled "hungry but sexy for palestine" and included a track named "Ana Bakrah Israel," which translates from Arabic to "I hate Israel." A separate playlist, labeled "p2P Palestine 2 Pree-DC protest trip," appeared to be curated for the March on Washington for Gaza, an event that took place on January 13, 2024. This playlist reportedly featured a song titled "FREE PALESTINE," containing the repeated lyric "F–k Israel, Israel a bitch," along with other inflammatory language directed at the Jewish state. Additionally, a third playlist on the account, bearing the label "ACAB" (shorthand for "All Cops Are Bastards"), was active during the summer of 2020, a period marked by widespread protests across the United States following the death of George Floyd.
Upon inquiry by The Free Press to City Hall for a response regarding the newly surfaced material, the mayor's office declined to offer any comment. However, within a short timeframe after the outreach, the Spotify account was made private, restricting public access to its contents.
These recent discoveries add to a pattern of online activity by Duwaji that has garnered significant attention since Mayor Mamdani's inauguration. Previously, Duwaji had been found to have liked Instagram posts that expressed celebratory sentiments in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel. She also engaged with a post that dismissed the sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli hostages and victims as a "mass hoax."
The scrutiny of Duwaji's digital footprint extends further back in time. In 2015, she publicly posted that Tel Aviv "shouldn’t exist in the first place," referring to the city’s population as "occupiers." Two years prior to that, as a teenager in 2013, she used a racial slur in another social media post.
In April, facing mounting public pressure over her past social media conduct, Duwaji issued an apology. In her statement, she acknowledged the "hurt" her posts had caused but did not specifically address her anti-Israel content or express direct regret over those particular sentiments.
Throughout the ongoing controversies, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has consistently defended his wife, asserting that Rama Duwaji is a private citizen who holds no official title and should therefore not be subjected to public scrutiny over her personal online history. Mayor Mamdani himself has a documented record of opposition to Israel. At a 2023 Democratic Socialists of America convention, he stated, "the struggle for Palestinian liberation was at the core of my politics and continues to be."
Rama Duwaji, 28, is a professional artist of Syrian descent who was born in Texas. She relocated to New York City in 2021 and met Mamdani through a dating application. The couple married in a civil ceremony at City Hall in February 2025, followed by a ceremony in Mamdani's native Uganda in July of the same year. She officially assumed the role of New York City’s first lady when Mayor Mamdani was inaugurated in January 2026.
In March, The Free Press initially brought widespread public attention to Duwaji's social media history, reporting that she had engaged with more than 70 Instagram posts promoting extreme anti-Israel positions. Separately, in response to her documented social media record, Israel's Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism has moved to formally recommend that Duwaji be barred from entering the country. The ongoing revelations continue to fuel public debate regarding the conduct and public image of figures associated with city leadership.
