Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to travel to New York in September to attend the UN General Assembly session. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani says he is reviewing whether it would be possible to arrest him during that visit.
In an interview on The New York Times podcast “The Interview,” Mamdani said he believes Netanyahu’s place is at The Hague in the Netherlands, where the International Criminal Court (ICC) is located. “I believe Prime Minister Netanyahu’s place is in The Hague,” Mamdani said. “He is accused of war crimes. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against him. Many people hold the same view because of his actions.”
He said it was not yet clear whether he had the legal authority to order the New York Police Department (NYPD) to detain a foreign head of government, but that he was in active discussions with the city administration’s legal department on the matter. “We will do as much as New York City law allows,” Mamdani said. “But we will not write any new law of our own for this purpose.”
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and several other Israeli leaders. The court alleged that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed during the war in Gaza, including using starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.
Mamdani had taken the same position during last year’s New York City mayoral campaign, describing Israel’s military operation in Gaza as genocide and calling Netanyahu a war criminal. At the time he said that if Netanyahu came to New York, he would order his arrest. He also condemned the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 as a terrible war crime. Legal experts said then that arresting a foreign prime minister on the orders of a New York City mayor would be almost impossible in practice and could create a conflict with the federal government.
The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court and does not recognise its jurisdiction. In February 2025, President Donald Trump imposed economic sanctions on the ICC, with his administration arguing that the court has no judicial authority over the United States or Israel. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later vowed to destroy the ICC, saying the court was waging a kind of war against the United States in the name of international law.
Facing a difficult re-election contest in October, Netanyahu recently dismissed Mamdani’s threat of arrest in a radio interview. He also alleged that Mamdani supports Hamas — a charge Mamdani has denied. Netanyahu said Mamdani was on the side of terrorists, and that those who hate Jews and Israel ultimately hate America too, something he said Mamdani did not want to understand or take seriously.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, accused Mamdani — New York’s first Muslim mayor — of failing to confront rising antisemitism in the city. Mamdani said he had increased the budget of the office that works to combat hate crimes. Danon said Netanyahu would come to New York, proudly address the UN General Assembly, and present Israel’s position and its citizens’ right to self-defence before the world. The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, dismissed Mamdani’s comments as pure political theatre and noted that the United States is not a member of the ICC.
Mamdani’s remarks come as signs of a shift in the Democratic Party’s earlier stance on Israel are emerging. Last Wednesday, nearly half of the Democratic members of the US House of Representatives voted to cancel $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel. Although the measure did not pass, it is seen as a significant sign of weakening in the party’s unconditional support for Israel. Asked about the impact of the Gaza war, Mamdani said it would be hard to find a more bankrupt policy position than the United States’ stance on Gaza and Palestine, adding that the war is now affecting voters across the country and that its effect was reflected in New York’s recent election results.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report