The New York mayor said there is an “active conversation” within his staff over whether to detain the Israeli prime minister when he arrives in September for the U.N. General Assembly.
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New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani says his administration is still weighing whether to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in the city in September for the U.N. General Assembly.
But the mayor told the New York Times podcast “The Interview” that he was still working with his staff to determine if ordering the New York Police Department to detain Netanyahu would be legal. He emphasized that he would follow the law.
“That’s an active conversation with our legal department. … What we’ve seen at the national level is a desire sometimes to write your own laws, to go outside of the bounds of legality. That’s not something we have an interest in,” Mamdani said.
“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” the mayor said, referring to the home of the International Criminal Court.
The ICC, a tribunal that investigates genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
President Donald Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, have blasted the ICC for the warrant. The positions of both administrations has been to support Netanyahu during the war in Gaza, which Israel launched after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas militants who killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostage.
Before a ceasefire last year, Israel’s retaliatory offensive killed 73,250 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says the majority of casualties are women and children.
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Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, wrote on X on Saturday that Mamdani’s comments “will not change a thing.”
Netanyahu, Danon said, “will come to New York, address the United Nations General Assembly with pride, and stand before the world to state Israel’s truth and its unwavering right to defend its citizens.
Mamdani, who became mayor in January, said during his campaign that he intended to arrest Netanyahu if elected.
When the ICC issued arrest warrants targeting Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, in 2024, the prime minister called the decision an “antisemitic move with one goal: to deter me, to deter us, from exercising our natural right to defend ourselves against our enemies who seek to destroy us.”
And since Trump returned to office for a second term, he has targeted the ICC for its actions against Israel over the country’s war on Gaza. His administration has levied sanctions against the ICC, including sanctions targeting ICC officials for their role in the Israeli probe. He also issued an executive order last year accusing the ICC of engaging in “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.”
America’s support for Israel has been a divisive issue for Democrats.
Earlier this week, 103 House Democrats voted to cut off military aid to Israel for the next fiscal year. Though the vote signaled a growing disconnect between the Democratic leadership’s long-standing support for Israel, the amendment failed.
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