Zohran Mamdani says he is reviewing whether his administration could arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli prime minister visits New York in September for the UN general assembly. The New York City mayor said he is already in active conversation with the city’s law department about what, if anything, his office can do.
He framed the issue in stark terms. Mamdani said, “I believe that prime minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” and added that Netanyahu is “a war criminal who has been charged by the international criminal court.” He also said it is unclear whether he has the legal authority to order the New York City Police Department to detain a foreign leader.
The reason the comments matter now is simple: Netanyahu is expected in New York in September, and Mamdani has already said before that he would order the NYPD to arrest him if he ever set foot in the city. That was during his mayoral campaign, when he also described Israel’s military actions in Gaza as genocide and called the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel a horrific war crime.
The legal ground under that promise is shaky. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders in November 2024, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and other inhumane acts. But the US is not a party to the court and does not recognize its authority, which is why legal experts described any attempt to arrest Netanyahu as a practical impossibility and warned it could put Mamdani in direct conflict with the federal government.
Mamdani tried to narrow his position to what city law would allow, saying, “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do,” and adding, “But we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.” That leaves the key question unresolved: whether the NYPD could do anything at all if Netanyahu arrived for the UN general assembly, or whether the city would be forced to stand down while a long-promised confrontation stayed on paper.
Netanyahu has brushed off the threat, saying in a recent radio appearance that he was not concerned and accusing Mamdani of standing with “the terror actors.” He also said Mamdani does not recognize or care that those who hate Jews and Israel ultimately hate America. Danny Danon also attacked Mamdani, saying he had failed to confront rising antisemitism in New York City, while Mamdani said he has increased funding for an office to combat hate crimes. Trump’s sanctions against the ICC in February 2025, and Marco Rubio’s pledge to “dismantle” the court, underscore how little room there is for any city-level move to translate into an actual arrest.
For now, the clash is less about whether Mamdani wants to make a point than whether New York City has any real mechanism to carry it out. If Netanyahu comes to New York in September, Mamdani will have to decide whether the law gives him a path forward or whether his most forceful campaign promise runs into the wall of federal power before the first patrol car is ever asked to move.
