World
Mamdani takes fire from both sides after saying he can’t arrest Netanyahu
NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani took fire on Tuesday from Jewish lawmakers and a leading anti-Zionist activist for admitting that, despite his promises to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he cannot actually do so.
Jewish and conservative New York lawmakers criticized Mamdani for wading into international politics while the city is facing more pressing issues.
International affairs are the purview of the federal government, not local officials.
New York State Assemblymember Sam Berger, a Jewish representative from Queens, highlighted flooding in the city, felony assaults and an increase in hate crimes.
“Maybe if [Mamdani] focused on New Yorkers instead of Rolling Stone photo shoots and international politics he has no authority over, our city would be safer,” Berger said.
Berger was referring to the recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, in which Mamdani was asked about criticism he and his wife, Rama Duwaji— also a staunch anti-Israel activist — have faced over their views on Israel and Gaza, and said it was “hard to prepare for death threats.”
“It is hard to prepare for getting a phone call from a district attorney telling you that someone from another state is going to be charged for what they have said and hoped to do about you,” Mamdani said.
In September, when Mamdani was running for mayor, Jeremy Fistel, a Texas man, was indicted on charges of making a terroristic threat as a hate crime for messages he had sent and left for Mamdani.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said at the time that Fistel told Mamdani “to go back to Uganda before someone shoots him in the head, to keep an eye on his house and family, to watch his back every second until he leaves America, and that he and his relatives deserve to die.”
Also criticizing Mamdani’s public threats to arrest Netanyahu was New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Brooklyn Republican and co-chair of the city council’s antisemitism task force, who said said, “Why did not you have your legal team look at this before you made it a core promise to your comrades, Mamdani?”
“Five New Yorkers dead from Legionnaires’ disease in just the last week while ‘Mayor’ Zohran Mamdani obsesses over Israel,” said Simcha Eisenstein, a state assemblymember from Brooklyn. “When will [Mamdani] stop the performative activism and do his actual job?”
However, some urged Mamdani to push ahead and try arrest Netanyahu.
Nerdeen Kiswani, one of the most prominent anti-Israel activists in the city as the head of the group Within Our Lifetime, said, “The law never mattered when it comes to the state asserting its power.”
“Not having independent legal authority to execute an arrest never stopped the NYPD before, and won’t stop them in the future, suddenly they respect the law when it comes to Netanyahu?” she said. “Netanyahu can and should be arrested.”
