(TNND) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he’s going to New York City in September for the U.N. General Assembly, despite calls from Mayor Zohran Mamdani for his arrest.
Netanyahu told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday that Mamdani was spewing hate and “pitting one group of New Yorkers against the other.”
Mamdani posted a video last week on official platforms for the mayor’s office, calling Netanyahu a “war criminal” who has orchestrated a “horrific genocide against the Palestinian people” and calling for the U.S. government to enforce a 2024 arrest warrant against Netanyahu issued by the International Criminal Court.
“He’s turning (New Yorkers) against New York Jews,” Netanyahu continued. “I mean, what are we, in the 1930s? What is this, you know? So much hate, so many lies.”
Mamdani said in his video message that his administration reviewed “every avenue available under applicable law” to determine if the city could execute the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
“It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant,” Mamdani said. “The federal government, however, does. And I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant. And I want to be equally clear: Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large.”
A poll released this week by YouGov showed nearly half of Americans think Netanyahu is guilty of war crimes in Gaza and think the U.S. should arrest him if he’s on American soil.
But President Donald Trump has said Netanyahu “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”
Netanyahu “is fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recently killed 52,000 innocent protestors, and has spent the last 47 years killing American Soldiers, and others,” Trump continued in a July 20 Truth Social post. “The only ones that should be arrested are the people that led Iran into this unprecedented SPIRAL OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION, something that should have been dealt with years ago, by previous Presidents!”
Jake Neiheisel, a political scientist at the University at Buffalo, said Mamdani talked on the campaign trail about arresting Netanyahu.
It’s something at least a contingent of his constituents wants, Neiheisel said.
And now Mamdani is following through, to an extent, on that campaign rhetoric.
But Neiheisel said Mamdani is simply “posturing” for his supporters about something he “should have known a while ago that was probably a no-go.”
“It’s taking a position that he knows is not going to be something that the federal government follows through on, particularly not now,” Neiheisel said. “It would be unlikely under even a Democratic administration for a variety of reasons.”
Israel is a close ally of the U.S., Neiheisel said. And the U.S. is not beholden to the ICC.
“Whether you like it or not, (Mamdani) has done an awful lot, or at least made overtures, toward many of the directions that he said he would take the city,” Neiheisel said.
The video calling for Netanyahu’s arrest is another example of that, he said.