Meet the Mamdani-endorsed candidate that could become the first Palestinian in New York Senate
There are fewer than 10 Palestinian Americans who have ever been elected to statewide offices in the US, and Aber Kawas is looking to add to that number.
On 23 June, the Democratic Socialist from the New York City borough of Queens is seeking the Democratic candidacy for Senate District 12, in a primary race that pits her against Filipino-American assemblyman Steven Raga.
The winner will carry their campaign through the November midterm elections, and if successful, will begin their term in New York's capital, Albany, in January.
Raga endorsed Mayor Zohran Mamdani's historic 2025 campaign. And as of last week, Mamdani endorsed Kawas in this race.
"The Mamdani movement...gave so many young people, so many people who were leftist progressives, something to do, something to lean into, something to hope for, something to channel their despair into, and they worked to knock on those doors," Kawas told Middle East Eye.
"What we're trying to capitalise on is that momentum and sustain that," she said.
Lived experience
Originally seen as an outsider candidate before his Democratic primary win just one year ago, Mamdani ran an avowedly left-wing campaign, promising rent control and free bus travel.
'I’m going to fight for the most marginalised, forgotten communities that so many politicians don’t centre'
- Aber Kawas
But what nabbed headlines was that Mamdani was unapologetically pro-Palestinian throughout his campaign.
Data later showed his stance on Israel and Palestine actually helped him seal the primary win, despite smears of antisemitism for his views on what is widely recognised as a genocide in Gaza.
Kawas does not have to adopt a position on the issue. She is, by all accounts, the embodiment of the position itself: a Palestinian immigrant to the US, dispossessed of her native home, who said she sees collective action and civic engagement in her adopted city as a path towards reconciliation for all its residents.
Her undocumented father was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the years after the 11 September 2001 attacks, when New York City, and the country, saw an aggressive crackdown on Muslims that included FBI raids, disappearances, and mass surveillance across mosques and other institutions.
Kawas's father was held for nearly three years before he was deported to Jordan, so many of her childhood memories involve watching her distraught mother speak to her father through a pane of glass - in what she described as a "mixed-use" detention centre that also housed prisoners accused of criminal conduct, not just civil violations.
She and her siblings had to grow up in a single-parent household, as is happening to thousands of families today, given that President Donald Trump has set a goal of one million deportations annually.
"I never want this to happen to anyone else," Kawas told MEE.
"We used to fight for comprehensive immigration reform as a pathway to citizenship," she added. "Now we are just fighting against all of these [Trump-era] policies - the Muslim ban, visas being taken away. So I think it tells us, as the left movement...you need to be bold, you need to fight for your communities, you need to show up."
Riding the wave
New York City has eight million residents who speak 800 different languages. Much of that diversity is concentrated in Queens, whose western region Kawas is hoping to represent.
'We need people who are going to go into the state legislature and challenge the status quo'
- Aber Kawas
Senate District 12 crosses and overlaps several diverse neighbourhoods, including Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside and a few others.
While unmistakably Muslim in her hijab, she is not an uncommon sight in her city.
But she is already garnering national headlines in right-wing media outlets that pinpoint her ties to previous employers and partner organisations, including the Council on American Islamic Relations and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
Both are registered and operational US-based non-profit advocacy groups, but both have also been accused by pro-Israel entities of being unaligned with American values.
"I started organising in my mosque. I used to organise around mutual aid [and] drug addiction issues in the mosque, domestic violence issues in the mosque. That's what I started doing as a young person. I've organised in community-based organisations like the Arab American Association around immigrant rights, language accessibility, police reform. That's my whole background," she told MEE.
"We need people who are going to go into the state legislature and challenge the status quo, create a political atmosphere that leadership needs to react to, that is going to move the Democratic party to act, that is going to show that we're formidable."
She knows she's taking a risk.
Kawas is running for office in a climate where attacks on Muslim-American individuals and institutions are at a 15-month high under the Trump administration, the Muslim Public Affairs Council found in April, citing an eleven-fold increase in targeted incidents in the first three months of this year alone.
In March, a man allegedly planned to firebomb the home of prominent New York City-based Palestinian-American activist Nerdeen Kiswani. He was arrested and now faces federal charges.
That same month, the longest-detained pro-Palestine protester under the Trump administration, Leqaa Kordia, was released after paying a $100,000 bond. Like Kawas, Kordia is Palestinian, and her adopted home is next door in New Jersey, whose suburbs are littered with the people who power New York City daily.
Kawas says she has two main reasons for seeking elected office, and they might seem contradictory.
"One is because I just feel like we're at our wits end as a movement...I'm in my mid-30s. I have conversations with my friends about whether or not to have children, right? Are children going to be able to survive the future politically?" Kawas said, wondering if they will be able to afford the future or survive today's political climate.
"And on the other hand, the other reason that I'm going in is not negative, it's positive. I think there's a political transformation happening at this moment, there's political openings happening, political opportunities we haven't seen before...and I feel that it's really important to be in that fight."
Earlier this month, next door in New Jersey's 12th district, Adam Hamawy, an Egyptian-American surgeon who gained national attention for his harrowing 2024 medical mission to Gaza, became all but assured a congressional seat in Washington next year after he handily won his Democratic primary.
And in May, progressive Democrat and pro-Palestine voice Chris Rabb won his Democratic primary in Pennsylvania's third district, making him the likely congressman next year, as there is no Republican candidate for the November ballot thus far.
Kawas said she firmly believes their position on Palestinian rights carried them to victory.
"When you express your support for Palestine, really, what that is signalling is that you are willing to speak out and speak truth to power, and I think that's what people want out of their local politicians," Kawas told MEE.
"What you are saying is, I'm going to fight for the most marginalised, forgotten communities that so many politicians don't centre."
With nearly $60,000 collected from small donations, Kawas is being outraised by Raga in her race so far, but she has received endorsements from national figures such as Senator Bernie Sanders and the only Palestinian member of Congress, Rashida Tlaib.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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