After publicly acknowledging that he has no authority to carry out his promise to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is now urging New Yorkers to protest Netanyahu ahead of his expected visit to the city in September for the UN General Assembly. Mamdani made the comment during a City Hall press conference on July 22, telling reporters, “If anyone feels a level of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we will always respect.” A spokesperson for Mamdani declined to say whether the mayor himself plans to protest Netanyahu’s arrival.
The remarks followed a video Mamdani released the night before in which he admitted that he did not have the authority to arrest Netanyahu. During his 2025 mayoral campaign, however, Mamdani had pledged to order the NYPD to enforce the International Criminal Court arrest warrant himself. In the recording, he called Netanyahu “the architect of a horrific genocide” and a “war criminal,” and urged the federal government to enforce the ICC warrant against him. The video has been viewed nearly 90 million times. One day before the video was released, President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that Netanyahu “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”
