Mamdani’s vision of NY as ‘a city of international law’ runs up against reality

NEW YORK — In late 2024, Zohran Mamdani, then a candidate for New York City mayor, pledged in an interview that, if he was elected, he would arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the premier came to New York.

“As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu,” Mamdani told Zeteo. “This is a city that our values are in line with international law. It’s time that our actions are also.”

He dismissed the fact that the US is not a party to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had issued the arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

“It’s time that we actually step up and make clear what we are willing to do to showcase the leadership that is sorely missing in the federal administration,” he said.

That pledge collapsed on Tuesday night, when Mamdani acknowledged that the city could not carry out an ICC arrest.

“It is clear we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant,” Mamdani said in a video statement.

The statement marked an admission, more than a year and a half after his initial pledge to arrest Netanyahu, that Mamdani had been forced to reckon with the fact that international law does not have any bearing on the city government, despite Mamdani’s repeated description of New York as a “city of international law.”

No way to make the arrest

Mamdani had cited the ICC arrest warrant charging Netanyahu with crimes against humanity and war crimes as grounds for arresting him. The court does not have the power to enforce arrests itself and relies on member states to carry out arrests so defendants can stand trial in The Hague.

Legal scholars had said for more than a year, though, that a New York City mayor could not arrest a foreign head of state for a variety of reasons.

Neither the US nor Israel is party to the ICC, so the court does not have any jurisdiction in the US; foreign affairs are the exclusive purview of the federal government; federal law bars the imprisonment of a foreign head of state and bans any cooperation with the ICC; the NYPD cannot make illegal arrests or take acts that are prohibited by federal law; and New York City cannot extradite defendants to The Hague for trial.

New York City is subject to federal and New York State laws, and both US President Donald Trump and New York Governor Kathy Hochul had said Netanyahu would not be arrested.

The New York City mayor does not have a relationship with international law any more than a small-town mayor in middle America, even though the city is so prominent in global affairs.

Despite those obstacles, Mamdani stuck to his pledge.

“It is my desire to ensure that this be a city that stands up for international law,” he said last year.

Months later, he said, “Being a city of international law means looking to uphold international law.”

The vows drew repeated attention from media, activists and elected leaders, most recently last week, when Mamdani was asked about the pledge in an interview, and said he had ordered his legal team to review its options.

He announced the failure of that review in finding a way to arrest Netanyahu in the Tuesday video.

While Mamdani’s pledges to international law can be seen as a political or moral position, they cannot be a legal commitment. That is the wall that Mamdani ran into this week.

Legal contradictions

Mamdani’s Tuesday statement raised questions about what had taken so long to make the determination. Asked twice about the timing in a press conference on Wednesday, he declined to say when he knew that the city couldn’t make the arrest.

Netanyahu travels to New York for the UN General Assembly each September, so Mamdani needed to resolve the issue by then.

The ordeal highlighted how Mamdani has used “international law” as a cudgel against Israel.

Mamdani has almost exclusively deployed international legal arguments against Israel. He has said that he believes ICC warrants against other leaders, like Russian President Vladimir Putin, should also be honored, and has condemned Hamas for “war crimes,” but has only made those statements while talking about Israel.

His only standalone invocation of international law against another country appeared to be criticism of the US. When US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, Mamdani said the operation was “in violation of international law.”

His Tuesday video statement also showed his selective use of legal rhetoric.

Mamdani’s first line in the video stated, “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal” guilty of orchestrating “genocide.”

Terms like “genocide,” “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” are used in a colloquial sense and are repeatedly invoked by anti-Zionist activists.

In international courts, the terms have a strict legal definition, though, and in international law, like in criminal law, there is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. No Israelis have been found guilty of war crimes related to the Gaza war. Netanyahu is not a war criminal under international law.

The ICC is also not investigating alleged genocide by Israel — that is a separate international court, which has also not made a determination, and probably won’t for years.

The ICC prosecutor who issued the warrant against Netanyahu — before he was suspended for alleged sexual abuse — indicated in an April interview that the court did not have sufficient evidence of genocide to issue a charge, without ruling out the charge in the future.

Mamdani has committed to following international law to the letter, but stating unequivocally that Netanyahu is a war criminal and Israel is guilty of genocide goes beyond any rulings by international courts.

‘Political grandstanding’

Mamdani has accused Israel of genocide more than three dozen times on X alone since the start of the Gaza war. He has also made the accusation in debates, TV interviews, radio appearances and during a meeting with Trump. The only time he invoked the accusation in another context appears to be a statement about Armenia.

In Wednesday’s press conference, he twice declined to say that Hamas had committed genocide, only stating that the October 7 attack was a “horrific war crime.”

His Tuesday video, including his latest anti-Israel genocide charge, sparked widespread outrage from leading Jewish groups, Jewish and non-Jewish city lawmakers, and some anti-Zionist activists.

Before stating that the city could not arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani listed a litany of alleged outrages by Israel, including that Israel was targeting “neonatal care centers,” starving “countless people,” “gunning down hundreds of aid workers and journalists.” He also cited a UN report accusing Israel of targeting children, and said that Americans were paying “for the bombs that do the killing.”

The claims are largely exaggerated or based on disputed evidence, such as UN reports by investigators with histories of antisemitism.

Critics accused Mamdani of contributing to a dangerous environment for Jews, neglecting problems in the city to focus on Israel, and furthering a one-sided narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The statement did not mention Hamas or the terror group’s October 2023 onslaught in Israel.

The video has been viewed more than 61 million times, making it the most-viewed clip Mamdani has ever released.

“Mayor Mamdani: New Yorkers elected a mayor to lead this city — not to make Israel the centerpiece of your political grandstanding,” the UJA-Federation of New York, the city’s leading Jewish group, said in an unusually harsh statement. “Shame on you.”