The beauty queen says that Mamdani’s wife was ready to take a photo in a cafe, but then refused to deal with her after learning that she was Israeli.
Melanie Shiraz, Miss Israel 2025, posted a video of her meeting with Rama Dawaji, wife of New York City Mayor Zahran Mamdani, at a cafe in Brooklyn, and claimed that Dawaji refused to deal with her on the Palestine issue.
“So, guess who was sitting next to me in a café in New York?” Shiraz, 27, said in a video on Instagram calling out the 28-year-old First Lady of New York City. “No one but Zahran Mamdani’s wife, Rama Dawaji – the same Rama Dawaji who posted terrible anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-terrorist things has sympathy not long ago and has also apologized for it.”Shiraz said that Dawaji was willing to take a photo with her until she learned of her nationality.“Until I told her that, as an Israeli, I was disappointed to see the kind of rhetoric she was promoting online,” Shiraz said. “But I told her that part of my ideology as an Israeli is to have a productive dialogue in which neither side is constantly dehumanized.”“But the shift in behavior was clear, and the unwillingness to participate was even more pronounced,” Shiraz wrote on Tuesday. “I approached the interaction openly through genuine, respectful conversation. This openness was not reciprocated. This is perhaps the most telling point: how often this disconnect has arisen, and how normalized it has become.”
Rama Dawaji was severely criticized for her activities on social media that expressed hatred toward Israel, although Mamdani defended her and said that she was a private person and had no previous role in the administration. Rama Dawaji did not issue a statement regarding the beauty queen’s claim. The video also does not show any conversation between them.Last month, Al-Dawaji apologized for posts she made on social media when she was a teenager, saying she was “truly sorry” for sharing messages in language that was “extremely harmful to others,” without providing additional details. One post insisted that Tel Aviv “should not exist,” while another praised Palestinian activist Shadia Abu Ghazaleh — a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a US-designated terrorist organization.“When a tabloid recently published old tweets I wrote when I was a teenager, I felt a lot of shame when faced with the language I used that was so harmful to others; being 15 doesn’t excuse that,” Dawaji said last month. “I have read and seen much of what others have said in response, and I understand the hurt I have caused and I am truly sorry.”