No, Mamdani cannot arrest Netanyahu

New York’s Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has stated that he would like to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has been promising this ever since he was elected, and even before that he was chanting along with the crowd: “Netanyahu, you can’t hide, we’ll indict you for genocide”. Mamdani would like to seize the opportunity when the head of the Jewish state’s government arrives in the city in September for the UN General Assembly. But the mayor himself admitted in a video on X that he cannot actually do anything. “It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority,” he says, to enforce the International Criminal Court’s warrant for crimes against humanity in the war in Gaza. And so the millennial Muslim mayor is now calling on the federal government – which would have the authority – to carry out the arrest. Although he did not mention him by name, U.S. President Donald Trump responded to the politician who has become the symbol of the Democrats’ ‘red revolution’. “Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape or form, whilst he is in the United States,” he wrote on social media.

A New York State Assembly member has asked the Attorney General to investigate Mamdani for threatening to have him arrested, on the grounds that he may be breaching certain local laws, given that even when visiting the UN Headquarters, leaders enjoy diplomatic immunity – as was the case in 1960 when Fidel Castro attended the UN General Assembly, met Malcolm X, stayed in Harlem and smoked his Cohiba cigars. Given that an arrest is impossible, Mamdani’s move appears to be a stunt, a political manoeuvre to maintain his moral high ground on the Israel issue and not lose the attention of his electorate, who see him as a vigilante and a soldier of anti-colonialism – the Israel issue, incidentally, is dividing the Democrats ahead of the November mid-terms, risking a boost for the MAGA camp. The Wall Street Journal described Mamdani as a ‘global policeman’. The president of the Israel Law Centre stated: ‘The mayor’s job is to keep New Yorkers safe, not to turn the city’s police force into the armed wing of The Hague.’