After publicly acknowledging that he has no authority to hold out his promise to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, New York Metropolis Mayor Zohran Mamdani is now urging New Yorkers to protest Netanyahu forward of his anticipated go to to town in September for the UN General Assembly.
Mamdani made the remark throughout a Metropolis Corridor press convention on July 22, telling reporters, “If anybody feels a degree of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we are going to at all times respect.” A spokesperson for Mamdani declined to say whether or not the mayor himself plans to protest Netanyahu’s arrival.
The remarks adopted a video Mamdani launched the evening earlier than by which he admitted that he didn’t have the authority to arrest Netanyahu. Throughout his 2025 mayoral marketing campaign, nonetheless, Mamdani had pledged to order the NYPD to enforce the Worldwide Legal Court docket arrest warrant himself. Within the recording, he referred to as Netanyahu “the architect of a horrific genocide” and a “conflict legal,” and urged the federal government to enforce the ICC warrant in opposition to him. The video has been seen almost 90 million times.
In the future earlier than the video was launched, President Donald Trump wrote on Reality Social that Netanyahu “is not going to be arrested, in any approach, form, or kind, whereas in the US of America.”
No matter critics claiming the alternative, U.S. support for Israel, together with safety for visiting Israeli leaders, displays a longstanding bipartisan function of American international coverage that predates and extends past any single administration. It has been sustained throughout each Republican and Democratic presidencies since Israel’s founding.
Moreover, international coverage authority, together with how the federal authorities treats a visiting head of state, rests constitutionally with the president and the manager department, not with metropolis authorities.
Mamdani’s continued calls relating to Netanyahu have prompted criticism from Jewish organizations and from far-right U.S. politicians. The UJA-Federation of New York mentioned in an announcement, “New Yorkers elected a mayor to guide this metropolis, to not make Israel the centerpiece of your political grandstanding,” accusing Mamdani of antisemitism.
The feedback mirror a constant sample in Mamdani’s public document that goes past criticism of particular Israeli authorities insurance policies to questioning the legitimacy of the Israeli state itself. As a state assemblyman in Could 2021, Mamdani led a rally the place individuals chanted “BDS, BDS” and criticized officials’ “incomprehensible fealty to the Israeli state.”
At an October 8, 2023, Instances Sq. rally, two days after the Hamas assault on Israel, native members of the Democratic Socialists of America, Mamdani’s personal get together, celebrated Hamas. Mamdani condemned the rally two days later, telling Politico that his assist for Palestinian liberation “ought to by no means be confused for a celebration of the lack of civilian life.” He has additionally declined to affirm Israel’s proper to exist as a Jewish state, referred to as Israel an “apartheid state,” and declined to sentence the slogan “globalize the intifada.”
In April 2024, Mamdani wrote on social media that Columbia College college students arrested on the campus “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” have been arrested “for the crime of peacefully protesting in opposition to genocide.” The encampment, which Columbia’s president cited in calling within the NYPD to clear it, has been extensively documented as together with antisemitic conduct.
The Anti-Defamation League recorded chants together with “we don’t need no Zionists right here,” and protesters telling Jewish college students to “return to Poland.” The Instances of Israel reported that protesters blocked campus entry to these they perceived as “Zionists,” violating the rights of Jewish college students. The publication additionally reported that Jewish college students confronted near-daily chants of “Globalize the Intifada” and, on one event, college students chanting in assist of “10,000 October 7ths.”
Twenty-one members of Congress, led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Dan Goldman, wrote that the “from the river to the ocean” chants used on the encampment constituted a name to eradicate Israel and all Jews inside its borders. In addition they argued that Columbia’s shift to hybrid courses tacitly acknowledged a hostile atmosphere for Jewish college students and appeared to violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian and lead organizer with Columbia College Apartheid Divest, grew to become a lawful everlasting resident in November 2024 by marriage to a U.S. citizen. In March 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio decided that Khalil’s actions, together with organizing Columbia’s protest encampment, carried “doubtlessly severe adversarial foreign policy penalties” for the US underneath the Immigration and Nationality Act. ICE arrested him at his Columbia-owned residence on that foundation.
Mamdani, then a mayoral candidate, referred to as the arrest “a blatant assault on the First Modification and an indication of advancing authoritarianism underneath Trump,” and later that month tried to push previous safety to confront then-border czar Tom Homan on the New York State Capitol in Albany, shouting “Do you consider within the First Modification?” and “What number of extra New Yorkers will you detain?” Homan didn’t reply past what Mamdani later described as a “smirk.” Mamdani individually hosted Khalil for an iftar dinner.
Mamdani was launched at a Staten Island mosque occasion by organizer Abdullah Akl, who has a documented document of chanting “Strike, strike Tel Aviv, Abu Obeida, our beloved” in 2024 and calling for Palestine “from the river to sea” at a December 2023 conference.
Professional-Palestinian demonstrators gathered exterior Younger Israel of Kew Gardens Hills, a Queens synagogue, on the evening of January 8, 2026, chanting “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas right here” throughout a protest of a synagogue occasion selling actual property funding in Israel and the West Financial institution.
By midday the subsequent day, because the video unfold broadly, Gov. Kathy Hochul, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a number of other different city and state officers had already condemned the chants, whereas Mamdani’s workplace remained silent. He issued an announcement Friday night calling the rhetoric “wrong and don’t have any place in our metropolis,” with out naming Hamas, then adopted up about an hour afterward X, “Chants in assist of a terrorist group don’t have any place in our metropolis,” after going through criticism for the omission. Critics famous the roughly 24-hour delay was slower than each Hochul’s response and that of his predecessor, Eric Adams.
Below the 1947 Headquarters Agreement, the US is obligated to make sure the functioning of the UN headquarters district and to supply accredited delegations with the privileges and immunities required underneath the settlement. The U.S. Mission to the United Nations says it’s dedicated to defending UN Headquarters, accredited missions, and the diplomatic group, coordinating with the NYPD, the State Division’s Diplomatic Safety Service, the Secret Service, and the FBI.
A 1951 State Division authorized memorandum addressing the same dispute involving picketing exterior the Soviet mission discovered that the U.S. obligation to guard international delegations from demonstrations was ruled by Section 15 of the Headquarters Settlement. That provision entitles delegations to the identical privileges and immunities the US typically accords to diplomatic envoys.
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