Mayor Zohran Mamdani said his administration was still discussing whether to arrest the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, if he comes to New York City as expected for the U.N. General Assembly in September.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,\u201d Mr. Mamdani told Lulu Garcia-Navarro this week on \u201cThe Interview,\u201d<\/a> a New York Times show, referring to the home of the United Nations\u2019 International Court of Justice.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court,\u201d Mr. Mamdani added. \u201cAnd what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.\u201d<\/p>\n The mayor said it was unclear to him whether he has the legal authority to order the Police Department, which he oversees, to detain a foreign leader like Mr. Netanyahu. He said he was in \u201can active conversation\u201d with the city\u2019s Law Department about the matter.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that\u2019s what we will do, but we won\u2019t be writing our own laws to that end,\u201d Mr. Mamdani added.<\/p>\n During his mayoral campaign last year, Mr. Mamdani said<\/a> in an interview with The Times that he would order the Police Department to arrest Mr. Netanyahu, who is pursuing re-election in Israel.<\/p>\n At the time, the mayor said that such an arrest would be honoring a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court over Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s role in the war in Gaza, which Mr. Mamdani and a United Nations commission<\/a> have called a genocide.<\/p>\n Mr. Netanyahu addressed Mr. Mamdani\u2019s threat<\/a> to arrest him during a recent radio appearance, saying he was not concerned, and he accused the mayor of supporting Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls a significant portion of Gaza. Hamas was responsible for the deadly attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that precipitated Israel\u2019s war in Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cI think he should look at who he’s condemning, who he\u2019s praising,\u201d the prime minister said<\/a> during an interview this week with Sid Rosenberg, a local radio personality and a frequent critic of Mr. Mamdani. \u201cHe\u2019s condemning Israel, the one democracy that stands shoulder to shoulder with American values.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWho does he champion? Hamas, that calls openly to massacre every Jew on earth, that conducted that horrible massacre, the worst massacre on Jews since the Holocaust,\u201d Mr. Netanyahu added.<\/p>\n He also said Mr. Mamdani \u201cdoesn\u2019t care\u201d that \u201cthose who hate the Jews and Israel ultimately hate America.”<\/p>\n \u201cAnd in fact I think, secretly, he hates America,\u201d Mr. Netanyahu added.<\/p>\n Danny Danon, Israel\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, accused Mr. Mamdani in a statement on Saturday of failing to focus adequately on rising antisemitism in New York City. Mr. Mamdani has rejected such accusations, noting that he has increased funding for an office to combat hate crimes.<\/p>\n \u201cIsraeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will come to New York, address the United Nations General Assembly with pride, and stand before the world to state Israel\u2019s truth and its unwavering right to defend its citizens,\u201d Mr. Danon said.<\/p>\n Mr. Mamdani has condemned the Oct. 7 attacks<\/a>. He has made his extensive concerns about Israel a focal point of his political identity, raising the issue frequently. Several people who know him well have said he considers Palestinian liberation one of the most pressing moral issues of his time.<\/p>\n Mr. Mamdani\u2019s views about Israel are no longer on the fringe of the Democratic Party. Nearly half of House Democrats voted this week to end U.S. aid to Israel<\/a>, which was not enough for the measure to pass, but enough to demonstrate a shift in the party\u2019s posture toward one of the country\u2019s stalwart allies in the Middle East.<\/p>\n Asked by Ms. Garcia-Navarro about the political weight he places on Israel, Mr. Mamdani said the war was motivating voters throughout the country, including in House races in New York last month, when his endorsed candidates<\/a> emerged victorious.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is hard to find a more bankrupt policy approach than what our country has done to Gaza and to Palestine,\u201d Mr. Mamdani added.<\/p>\n He also talked about national politics, speaking positively about the prospect that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a fellow democratic socialist, may run for president in 2028.<\/p>\n \u201cI think she\u2019d make a good anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He denounced President Trump\u2019s immigration tactics, but said border security was important and that he was \u201cwilling to work with the federal government\u201d when immigrants are convicted of serious crimes.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we are unwilling to do,\u201d he added, \u201cis to participate in civil immigration enforcement with a federal government that has said openly it wants to deport a vast majority of people for crimes that we will never even know.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Mamdani defended his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, amid criticisms of her from some of his fellow democratic socialists, reiterating that she has been successful at driving down crime in New York City. (Some of his supporters disagree with the frequency of the agency\u2019s low-level arrests<\/a> carried out under Ms. Tisch.)<\/p>\n He also lamented the media coverage of his wife, Rama Duwaji<\/a>, an artist who has largely avoided the spotlight during his mayoralty. Ms. Duwaji has come under fire<\/a> for some of her past social media behavior<\/a>, including liking a post that celebrated Hamas\u2019s attack on Israel.<\/p>\n \u201cShe is her own person,\u201d Mr. Mamdani said. \u201cShe\u2019s an incredible artist, and yet so much of how she engages with the world today is framed through her being my wife.\u201d<\/p>\n The mayor shed some light on how he views an issue that is central to his political rise: the economic struggles of New Yorkers who fall into income thresholds higher than what was traditionally considered poor or working-class.<\/p>\n Asked whether he would consider someone making $250,000 a year working class, he replied: \u201cI haven\u2019t asked myself where it starts and stops. What I would say is those who are working to try and afford the basic dignities of life and aren\u2019t able to do so, I think that that is also working class.”<\/p>\n Ms. Garcia-Navarro followed up, asking about a janitor being lumped into the same category as a lawyer, to which Mr. Mamdani bemoaned \u201ca fixation on a definition of something.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not that everyone is making the same amount of money or facing the same amount of struggle, but that they just want to know, is there any way for them to actually be able to work this hard and afford a good life in the city?\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n And he offered a window into how he views his new role as one of the country\u2019s best-known politicians, saying, \u201cI think there is some level of absurdity that you have to have as a part of yourself to believe that it should be you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani said his administration was still discussing whether to arrest the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1451,1091,85569,113815,1445,1450,9,56,63,65,64,30355,1876,1446],"class_list":["post-299560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-benjamin","tag-democratic-socialists-of-america","tag-international-court-of-justice-un","tag-law-department-nyc","tag-mamdani","tag-netanyahu","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-police-department-nyc","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-zohran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}