New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's family has multiple connections to Susan Abulhawa, the anti-Israel activist who has called Jews "cockroaches" and "vampires," even as his spokespeople scramble to put distance between the mayor's household and the 55-year-old novelist.

Mamdani's office claimed his wife, 28-year-old artist Rama Duwaji, has "never engaged with or met" Abulhawa. The problem: the threads connecting Abulhawa to the Mamdani family don't run through just one person. They run through the father, the mother, and the wife.

The Web of Connections

As reported by the Post, Duwaji came under fire last week for illustrating a short story, Diana Islayih's "Trail of Soap," included in an anthology of Palestinian writing co-edited by Abulhawa and published earlier this year under the title "Every Moment is a Life: Gaza in the Time of Genocide." That alone was enough to raise questions. But the connections stretch further back and deeper into the family.

Abulhawa sits on the Advisory Policy Council of the Gaza Tribunal, a 29-member "people's tribunal" established in London in 2024 that describes itself as collecting evidence against Israel in Gaza. Also on that council: Mahmood Mamdani, the mayor's father and a professor at Columbia University's Department of Anthropology. Another prominent figure on the tribunal is former British Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn, whose own history with antisemitism controversies needs no introduction.

Abulhawa was also a featured speaker at Columbia University's Center for Palestine Studies, an institution with which the elder Mamdani has long been associated.

Then there's the 2018 open letter to members of the Saudi royal family, urging them to release professor and women's rights activist Hatoon al-Fassi. Among the prominent signatories are Abulhawa, Mahmood Mamdani, and Mira Nair, the mayor's filmmaker mother.

So the mayor's father serves alongside Abulhawa on a tribunal council. His mother co-signed a public letter with her. His wife illustrated a story for an anthology that Abulhawa co-edited. And the official line is that there's no connection.

Who Is Susan Abulhawa?

This matters because of who Susan Abulhawa is and what she has said.

She has shown support for Hamas. After the group's attack on Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, she called the massacre "a spectacular moment that shocked the world." In a piece for The Electronic Intifada, she wrote:

"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."

"Freedom fighters." That's how she described the perpetrators of the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust.

She has called Israel a "demonic parasite." She has called Jews "cockroaches" and "vampires." Her novel "The Scar of David," originally published in 2006, carries a title that plays on the Star of David. This is not a person whose views are ambiguous or whose associations are incidental.

The First Lady's Own Record

Duwaji’s link to Abulhawa might be easier to dismiss if the mayor’s wife did not have her own history of controversial activity on social media. She has drawn criticism for liking an Instagram post from February 2024 that cast doubt on whether Hamas carried out sexual violence against Israelis during the October 7 attack. She also liked another post that shared images celebrating the attack itself.

The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement Monday that connected these dots plainly. The ADL noted that Duwaji "chose to illustrate and attach her name to a project by a woman who has a long history of celebrating terror and demonizing Jews, including calling the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks 'a spectacular moment' and calling Israel a 'demonic parasite,' and a litany of vile, antisemitic posts."

The ADL went further:

"Collaborating on a project with Susan Abulhawa goes beyond First Lady Duwaji's deeply troubling liking of pro-October 7 posts and demonstrates a troubling pattern."

A pattern. Not a coincidence. Not a misunderstanding. A pattern.

Abulhawa Fires Back

To his credit, Mamdani condemned Abulhawa's posts against Jewish people. But Abulhawa wasn't interested in a quiet separation. In a video posted to X on Sunday, she addressed Mamdani directly:

"You succumbed to forces that seek to pick away at you, at your talented, beautiful wife, and at your work, they will claw harder with each apology or concession you make."

She followed with a warning:

"If you are not careful, they will siphon your soul before you even realize it."

Read that language carefully. Mamdani condemns antisemitism, and Abulhawa frames it as surrendering to shadowy forces that "siphon your soul." The rhetoric is not subtle. The implication about who those forces are is not accidental.

The Playgrounds for Palestine Connection

Abulhawa also founded Playgrounds for Palestine Inc. in 2001. The organization told The Post that in 2024, it built playgrounds in the West Bank, funded several international and local organizations to deliver food and aid, delivered direct aid from the US and Egypt, and established an elementary school in Gaza that remains operational. In 2024, the organization spent $255,000 on the purchase and installation of children's playgrounds and skateparks.

The charitable work doesn't erase the rhetoric. Plenty of people with abhorrent views also run organizations that do tangible things. The two aren't mutually exclusive, and one doesn't launder the other.

What Distancing Actually Requires

Mamdani's spokespeople sought to distance the mayor and his wife from Abulhawa. But distancing requires more than a statement. It requires an explanation of how the mayor's wife ended up illustrating a story for an anthology co-edited by a woman his office says she has never met. It requires accounting for why his father sits on the same tribunal council as an activist who calls Jews cockroaches. It requires reckoning with the fact that his mother co-signed a letter alongside that same activist.

One connection is a coincidence. Two is a pattern. Three, spread across three family members over nearly a decade, is an environment.

New York City's Jewish community, the largest in the world outside Israel, deserves a mayor whose household doesn't keep surfacing alongside people who celebrate the murder of Jews and dehumanize them with the language of vermin. Mamdani condemned the rhetoric. Now the question is whether the connections that produced it will be addressed with the same clarity, or whether the statement was the end of the conversation rather than the beginning.

Abulhawa did not return a request for comment from The Post. She didn't need to. The video she posted said everything.