Mamdani’s Wife Exposed in Anti-Semitism Group

Zohran Mamdani speaking to reporters on a city sidewalk — Photo: Ron Adar / Shutterstock

Rama Duwaji, the wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, spent much of 2026 as a paid host at a luxury retreat brand whose organizers publicly called for the destruction of Israel.

Quick Take

Rama Duwaji served as “artist-in-residence” for The Women Sanctuary at retreats in Spain, Corsica, and Portugal throughout 2026.
The group’s social media accounts called Israel an “apartheid colonial state” and urged people to “abolish” it.
Duwaji skipped America’s 250th anniversary celebrations to attend a $3,400 retreat in Mallorca over the Fourth of July weekend.
An Israeli consulate spokesman said Duwaji is “pushing a false and dangerous anti-Israel narrative.”

Three Countries, One Retreat Group, One Title

Duwaji’s travel schedule in 2026 tells its own story. She attended a “Plants of the Quran” retreat in Mallorca, Spain, over the Fourth of July weekend, skipping America 250 festivities back home. Weeks later she co-hosted a Corsica retreat honoring Mary, mother of Jesus, as a “Palestinian woman giving birth under occupation”. By September she was in Porto, Portugal, for a retreat centered on Islamic calligraphy. Each event was run by the same organization, The Women Sanctuary.

At each stop, Duwaji held the title of “artist-in-residence,” a paid, featured role rather than that of a passing guest. The Mallorca retreat alone cost attendees roughly $3,400, and reporting describes the events as sold out. That consistency matters. This was not a one-time lapse in judgment but a recurring, public partnership with the same group across an entire year.

What The Group Behind The Retreats Has Posted

The Women Sanctuary’s own social media history is where the story sharpens. The group posted that “the apartheid colonial state of Israel has committed a genocide against the Palestinian people” and called to “abolish the colonial apartheid state of Israel”. A separate post from September 2024 offered a prayer to Allah for the “liberation of Palestine”. These are not vague gestures toward peace. They are explicit calls for the elimination of a sovereign nation.

Reporters who uncovered these posts noted the retreats themselves folded political and religious messaging into the programming, including casting a biblical figure as living “under occupation”. For a group marketed as a wellness and art retreat, the political content is hard to separate from the brand. Duwaji’s repeated, paid involvement placed her name directly alongside that messaging, retreat after retreat.

A Mayor’s Antisemitism Message Meets His Household

Mamdani has positioned himself publicly as someone focused on fighting antisemitism in New York City, a city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel. That posture now sits uneasily next to his wife’s extended, high-profile association with an organization whose own words describe Israel in genocidal and colonial terms. Voters who expect consistency between a leader’s stated values and his household’s choices have reason to ask hard questions here.

An Israeli consulate spokesman in New York addressed the matter directly, stating that “Rama Duwaji is pushing a false and dangerous anti-Israel narrative”. That is not an anonymous internet critic. It is an official government voice responding to a documented pattern of travel, paid titles, and the retreat organizer’s own published statements.

Supporters of Duwaji could argue that attending or hosting an event does not mean she personally endorses every post the organizing group has ever made. That distinction between association and endorsement is a real one, and it shows up often in American political and legal debates over guilt by association. Courts have also long required public figures to tolerate heavier scrutiny than private citizens when their conduct touches matters of public concern.

Still, three separate retreats, a paid “artist-in-residence” title, and a consistent partnership with one organization is a pattern, not a coincidence. Reasonable people can debate how much personal responsibility that pattern carries. What is not up for debate is what actually happened: New York City’s first lady repeatedly lent her name and presence to a group that has called, in its own words, for abolishing Israel.