Aber Kawas Wins Queens State Senate Primary With Mamdani's Backing, Controversies in Tow

Aber Kawas won the Democratic primary for New York State Senate District 12, centered on Astoria, Queens, on Tuesday, according to reporting by the Jerusalem Post and Breitbart News. She ran as part of the Democratic Socialists of America coalition that Mayor Zohran Mamdani had popularized, and received his endorsement.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Kawas's win "comes off the back of Mamdani's three major primary wins in his attempt to remake the Democratic Party into a democratic socialist force." Roya News similarly noted her victory "adds to a series of recent victories by candidates aligned with Mamdani's effort to reshape the Democratic Party around democratic socialist policies."

Who Is Aber Kawas

Kawas was born and raised in New York to Palestinian parents and has spent years as a community organizer focused on Palestinian human rights, according to an interview she gave to Jacobin's podcast The Dig before the election. Her campaign platform covered democratic socialism, immigration reform, and New York's affordability crisis alongside explicit opposition to U.S. and New York-level support for Israel's military operations in Gaza.

The Jerusalem Post reported she is the first Palestinian Muslim woman elected to office in New York state.

NYC-DSA released a statement after her win: "Palestine was on the ballot, and now a Palestinian-American democratic socialist is going to Albany."

The Not On Our Dime Bill

Kawas co-developed the "Not On Our Dime!" campaign with Mamdani when he was still an assemblymember. According to Kawas in her Jacobin interview, the bill was first introduced in 2023 by then-Assemblymember Mamdani and State Senator Jabari Brisport. It was recently reintroduced in the state legislature by Queens DSA member Diana Moreno.

The legislation would amend New York's nonprofit law to prohibit tax-exempt organizations from funding what the bill's sponsors call illegal Israeli settlement activity. Mamdani has said the bill targets roughly $60 million a year flowing from New York-based charities to Israeli settlements, according to the Jerusalem Post. Critics of the bill note its language would expose organizations donating to groups including ZAKA, United Hatzalah, and the One Israel Fund — humanitarian and rescue organizations — to fines of at least $1 million per violation or lawsuits. The Jerusalem Post reported those details; Jacobin's coverage of the bill focused entirely on its stated goals without mentioning those specific enforcement mechanisms.

A bill that could penalize donations to a disaster-response organization like United Hatzalah is a different animal than one narrowly targeting settlement construction funds, and voters deserve both sides of that ledger.

The 9/11 Statements and Hamas Headband

Breitbart News surfaced video of Kawas attributing the September 11 attacks to "a system of capitalism and racism and white supremacy" and describing it as "an attack that a couple of people did." She added that finding it reprehensible to apologize for a terrorist attack "a couple of people did" when no apologies exist for genocides and slavery.

Breitbart also reported images circulating on social media showing Kawas wearing a headband associated with Hamas.

Neither the Jerusalem Post nor Roya News mentioned the 9/11 statements in their coverage. Jacobin, which published a pre-election interview with Kawas, did not address either controversy. That omission is notable given that both Breitbart and social media commentary have treated the statements and imagery as central to evaluating her fitness for office.

The Strongest Counter-Argument

Supporters of Kawas would reasonably argue that her 9/11 comments, read in full, were about systemic forces and historical context rather than a defense of al-Qaeda, and that critics are deliberately stripping her words of that context. They would also note that she explicitly called it reprehensible that apologies are demanded for the attacks while none exist for genocides and slavery — the quote says so. On the Hamas headband imagery, no source has provided verified provenance or date for those photos, and no named journalist has authenticated them independently. Those are fair evidentiary cautions.

That said, a politician who minimizes the September 11 attacks as something "a couple of people did" while running on a platform that centers geopolitical conflict as a core legislative agenda is going to face sustained scrutiny in Albany. Saying the attacks were rooted in systemic forces is not the same as calling them reprehensible mass murder. Kawas said both things in the same clip, and voters can weigh that.

What Comes Next

Once in Albany, Kawas's first major legislative test will be how aggressively she pushes the Not On Our Dime bill, now reintroduced by Diana Moreno. Kawas said in her Jacobin interview that there is now "much more potential for people to sign on to this bill" compared to when it was first introduced in 2023. Whether Mamdani's expanded influence in the state Democratic apparatus changes the bill's prospects is the unresolved question heading into the fall session.