ISRAEL PERSPECTIVE

Jerusalem, July 20, 2026. The threat by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani to order the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu if he attends the UN General Assembly in September has sparked a two-part reaction from Israel: outrage from the Prime Minister himself, and a fundamental critique in the press.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mamdani reaffirmed, "I think Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague. He is a war criminal indicted by the International Criminal Court." However, he noted that his administration remains in "active conversation" with the city's legal department, without certainty about his legal authority to order the New York police to make such an arrest: "What the law allows me to do in New York is what we will do, but we will not write our own laws for this purpose."

Netanyahu responded on American radio by accusing the mayor of supporting Hamas: "Who is he defending? Hamas, which openly calls for the massacre of all Jews on Earth... He condemns Israel, the only democracy that stands by American values." He added that Mamdani "secretly hates America."

The Jerusalem Post took the argument further in an editorial: every September, the article notes, Manhattan hosts heads of state with similar warrants without reacting — such as Iranian Ebrahim Raisi in 2023, a member of the 1988 "death commission," or Turkish President Erdogan, who have never been bothered by a New York mayor. "If he has a principle, he should have a complete list. Today, it only has one name."

Other Israeli articles have placed the episode in the context of a broader shift by the Democratic Party: 103 House members, or 48% of the caucus, recently voted to cut military aid to Israel. Meanwhile, two pro-Palestinian NGOs have sued the federal court in Manhattan over US sanctions targeting the ICC and its warrants against Netanyahu and former Minister Gallant, a decree that the Trump administration justifies as protecting "allies."