It didn’t take a statement from President Donald Trump to ensure that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani isn’t going to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in Manhattan for the annual U.N. General Assembly meetings in September.
Like all world leaders, Netanyahu is protected by the terms of the treaty by which the United States secured the placement of the world body in New York City in the years after the Second World War. Moreover, the United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, whose corrupt former chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, indicted the Israeli leader on false charges of having “intentionally and knowingly deprived” Gaza’s population of food, water, fuel and medicine in 2024. Khan resigned under fire because of a different issue entirely: accusations of sexual misconduct.
An empty threat
The Trump administration has rightly sought to dismantle the court, whose activities are a travesty of justice and motivated solely by political prejudice against the West, and especially Israel. The ICC’s influence may have made it impossible for Netanyahu to travel to most places in the world. However, it has no jurisdiction in the United States, and federal authorities would prevent Mamdani from interfering with the prime minister’s ability to visit New York or anywhere else in the country.
Mamdani is smart enough to know this. Why then, did he tell The New York Times that he had asked city lawyers to see if he had the authority to honor his campaign pledge to arrest the prime minister, whom he has smeared as a “war criminal”?
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