SerpApi.Org
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani still believes that he has the power to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "war criminal" if he comes to Gotham for the United Nations General Assembly.
As for whether he actually believes Israel is a real country, that's still a question that's up in the air.
Considering that Mamdani is mulling over one of his most deranged campaign promises, to arrest Netanyahu, whether or not he believes that the man presides over an actual nation (spoiler alert: he does) is not of inconsiderable interest, as a clip from 2023 again making the rounds demonstrates.
The occasion to bring it out of cold storage was an interview with The New York Times for a podcast published Saturday.
“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said, referring to the home of the United Nations’ International Court of Justice in the Netherlands.
“He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court,” Mamdani continued. “And what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.”
He added that he was in what he described as "an active conversation" with the New York City Law Department over his options.
It's probably worth noting here that the United States recognizes the state of Israel and is not a party to the ICC. It's also worth noting that one is not a war criminal until conviction and that the reason the United States isn't a signatory to the ICC is partially because it tends to reach perverse verdicts (and issue groundless warrants) anyhow.
So there's all that. There's also the fact that Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza are not the sixth, seventh, and eighth boroughs of the city of New York.
This is funny, because he seems to have an obsession with those pieces of land despite running for and winning the mayoralty of the most populous city in America.
But then, he's always been obsessed with Israel, as the resurfaced quote of him calling into question its existence proved.
During the clip -- recorded months after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in December of 2023, when Mamdani was a New York assemblyman, according to Fox News -- Mamdani talked of a pro-Israel "political apparatus that is still well-funded, quite strong, but is increasingly becoming more and more separated from public sentiment."
"For so many people, Israel is not a place, it is not a country. It’s an idea," he continued.
"You see that in so many politicians’ answers to the questions around Israel, is that their answers were written around 20, 30 years ago. They speak to a reality that does not exist," he continued.
"They pledge fealty to the idea of a two-state solution, irrespective of the fact that a second state for Palestinians is physically impossible because it's not even a contiguous piece of land at this moment between where Palestinians live. So, that all tells us that there is this disconnect."
So, we're really supposed to believe that Mamdani is a man dispassionately carrying out an ICC warrant which is useless on American shores?
Reiterating Mamdani's full history as it regards the Jewish state, even going back to his college days, is a fool's errand. Suffice it to say that the man has become the template of the air-quotes "anti-Zionist" for whom everything a Jewish or AIPAC-supported politician does with regards to Israel must be viewed with intense suspicion, but his own views need not be examined.
Mamdani is, I reiterate, a mayor. He does not have the capacity to lock the prime minister of another nation up on Rikers Island to prove a point he can't back up -- not unless he wants to come into the biggest diplomatic row in many a decade.
And I'll also say this: He isn't a stupid mayor. Oh, he may sound the part sometimes when he feigns ignorance about the Jewish state or his powers, but he isn't a dummy. This is a ruse, plain and simple, to make a foreign policy agenda he has no power to carry out into a priority concern.
If you voted for or supported this fool, remember: We told you so. A man who is this consumed over the activities of one country which is not even his in the state assembly does not intend to give up those grievances when he becomes a mayor.
Caveat emptor, New York. Whatever chaos he sows in the weeks leading up to the U.N. General Assembly, you have only yourselves to blame for it. He certainly told you precisely what was coming.
