When considering New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s largely empty threat to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if and when he comes to the Big Apple — and the Israeli leader’s defiant response — it’s worth considering statements the two politicians made in years past.

In 2023, Mamdani was speaking at a conference of the Democratic Socialists of America when he said, “The struggle for Palestinian liberation was at the core of my politics and continues to be.”

Four years earlier, in 2019, Netanyahu posted a meme on social media whose caption read: “They’re not just after me, they’re after us all. I’m just standing in their way.” Cribbing from a meme posted by US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu was referring to the criminal investigations he faced, and saying that he was actually being targeted for fighting on his supporters’ behalf.

These past comments offer some insight into the pair’s recent saber-rattling, as Netanyahu prepares to come to Manhattan in September to speak at the United Nations General Assembly.

Legal experts have noted that as a mayor, Mamdani has no authority to arrest a visiting leader of a foreign nation. If the mayor were to attempt it, based on a warrant issued in November 2024 by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity in the Gaza war, the US government would intervene and stop him. The prime minister is not — to the dismay of the mayor and his fans — about to find himself in the dock at The Hague.

Both Mamdani and Netanyahu are no doubt well aware of this. And yet the above statements are key to understanding why the mayor is still insisting that he is pursuing the idea, and why the Israeli premier is amplifying his threats with outraged retorts.

For Mamdani, an attempted arrest would be a way to throw a juicy slab of red meat to his base and to project himself, once again, into the center of the American political conversation, all while taking shots at Israel.

And for Netanyahu, it would be the best election advertisement he could ask for, distracting from domestic concerns and validating his self-image as the embattled leader singularly fighting to protect his country from the global forces of anti-Israel hate.

Bolstering the mayor’s brand

Mamdani is far from the only American progressive politician to oppose Israel. What separates him from most, however, is that being pro-Palestinian isn’t incidental to his politics, or one of a laundry list of left-wing positions he holds. He has made clear that this........

© The Times of Israel