SerpApi.Org
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's insistence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be arrested while traveling to New York for the United Nations General Assembly has ignited a firestorm with Jewish groups accusing the mayor of having crossed the line into antisemitism.
Mamdani this week reiterated his desire to execute an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in 2024 regarding allegations that Netanyahu committed war crimes in Gaza. While Mamadani admitted that he lacked the legal authority to execute such a move, the mayor released a video accusing Netanyahu and Israel of targeting "neonatal hospitals and maternity care centers," starving "countless people," and "gunning down" aid workers.
Critics accused Mamdani of mischaracterizing and lying about Israel's response to the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, while ignoring the conduct of Hamas, the terrorist organization responsible for the death of countless American and Israeli citizens.
"This is no longer simply about Prime Minister Netanyahu," the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based pro-Israel organization, wrote in a statement. "It reflects a broader pattern in which Mayor Mamdani repeatedly singles out Israel while using the prestige of his office to legitimize rhetoric that further isolates the Jewish state and deepens division here at home. At a time when Jewish New Yorkers are experiencing alarming levels of antisemitism, harassment and intimidation, they deserve a mayor who refrains from fomenting hatred against the world’s only Jewish country while maintaining the fiction that this is not anti-Jewish."
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said that Mamdani "remains relentlessly obsessed with the world’s only Jewish state—even as Jewish New Yorkers face record levels of antisemitism and the city confronts urgent problems that demand his attention."
"That obsession reveals two things," Greenblatt wrote on X. "First, an antisemitic worldview that doesn’t merely distort his judgment—it drives it. Second, the play-acting instincts of a perpetual student activist who’s never actually run anything, learning on the job at our expense."
Mamdani has long pledged to attempt to arrest Netanyahu if the Israeli leader chooses to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, where the confab occurs in September of each year.
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., told a U.S. TV network this week that it is Mamdani who ought to be arrested for supporting terrorists, not only Hamas, but also Iran.
“A few days ago, he sent his commissioner to the U.N. to meet with the Iranian representative,” Danon told News Nation. “While the U.S. soldiers are fighting the regime in Tehran, the mayor wanted to have a dialogue with this regime. And a few weeks ago, he actually called a terrorist that we eliminated a journalist, an innocent journalist. The mayor is instigating, is promoting antisemitism.”
On X, Danon condemned Mamdani for "blood libels," contending he was "elected to serve New Yorkers, not Hamas' propaganda."
Mamdani's comments also drew outrage from GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) asked on X Wednesday who wanted to see Mamdani "denaturalized and deported and sent straight back to where he came from?"
Other congressional Republicans, led by Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC), are already imploring acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate Mamdani's administration after Ana Maria Archilak, the mayor's commissioner for international affairs, scheduled a meeting with Iranian ambassador to the U.N. Amir Saeid Iravani this month before the State Department put a stop to it.
"We support President Trump’s effort to shore up American economic and national security interests in the Middle East, and we understand the vulnerable nature of continued peace negotiations," McDowell wrote in a letter co-signed by 14 other Republican lawmakers. "For that reason, we believe that a formal investigation is necessary to determine whether Commissioner Archila, acting on behalf of Mayor Mamdani, engaged in any unlawful activity or communication with the Islamic Republic of Iran."
The Logan Act makes it illegal for unauthorized Americans to negotiate with foreign governments engaged in disputes with the United States, such as the U.S.'s almost five-month-long war against Iran.
Earlier, the State Department had to prevent a separate meeting between the Mamdani administration and representatives of Colombia.
Article III Project founder Mike Davis, a White House ally and outside adviser, agreed that the Trump administration should investigate Mamdani for violations of the Logan Act.
"Yes," Davis texted the Washington Examiner.
Former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas Bud Cummins similarly agreed that the meeting should be "fully investigated," though he conceded that the Logan Act has historically been "very difficult to prosecute."
MAMDANI ‘TESTING THE LIMITS OF HIS INFLUENCE’ WITH FOREIGN POLICY FORAYS
"New York City also has legitimate reasons to communicate with foreign diplomats because the United Nations is based there," Cummins told the Washington Examiner. "That may give Mamdani and his staff enough room to avoid criminal charges, especially if there is no proof that they intended to influence Iran on matters involving the United States."
But Cummins added, "Still, even if no one is prosecuted, Mamdani and the officials involved should have to explain exactly what happened."
