(The Center Square) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is backing off threats to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits the city in September for the U.N. General Assembly meeting.
In a video posted on social media Tuesday night, Mamdani said his administration considered every “legal avenue” to make an arrest but determined that he doesn’t “have the independent legal authority” to put cuffs on the foreign leader.
But he called on the Trump administration to “execute the warrant” issued by the International Criminal Court for Netanyahu’s arrest on war crimes over his military campaign in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war.
“It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant. The federal government, however, does,” Mamdani said in the video clip. “As I’ve said, I agree with the ICC that Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested and tried for his crimes, as I do for anyone else charged by the ICC.”
Netanyahu and other world leaders will travel to New York City in two months for the General Assembly meeting, and the Israeli leader is expected to address the annual gathering.
Mamdani, New York City’s first Muslim mayor, has been highly critical of Netanyahu and the Israeli government. He has described the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide” and repeatedly called for the Israeli leader to be prosecuted.
“Anyone, with their eyes, with their heart, with their conscience, should recognize the devastation he has wrought and understand that he belongs before a court of law,” Mamdani said in Tuesday’s video clip.
Netanyahu has dismissed the mayor’s threats and accused Mamdani of siding with Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz has called Mamdani’s push to arrest Netanyahu “pure political theater” and points out that the U.S. hasn’t signed the Rome Statute, which obliges countries to arrest people who have ICC warrants.
President Donald Trump blasted Mamdani’s threats in a social media post Monday that said Netanyahu won’t be arrested, “in any way, shape, or form,” when he visits New York for the U.N. meeting.
“He 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 wrote on Truth Social. “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!”
