U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House this week, the same leader that New York City Mayor Mamdani has spent more than a year promising to have arrested if he comes to town. Mamdani recently acknowledged that city attorneys concluded that he had no legal authority to arrest Netanyahu when he is expected to attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September.
The mayor has focused on the prime minister with speeches and statements condemning the Israeli leader while the city faces significant infrastructure problems, housing shortages and rising prices. Mamdani has trained his attention on one foreign country and one foreign leader, leaving many of the city’s roughly 1 million Jews to fear being targeted and victimized by increasing antisemitic acts, many violent.
Mamdani has no power over America’s foreign policy, but he does have every obligation to protect the safety of all New Yorkers.
‘A mayor playing president’
Mamdani recently released a video, viewed by millions, falsely branding Netanyahu a “war criminal” and called for protests at the United Nations against the Israeli prime minister in September. The protest call drew anger from the Jewish community and other New Yorkers.
The president of the New York City Police Benevolent Association called Mamdani’s promotion of protests at the United Nations a permission slip for “violent agitators” and that “the mayor’s heated rhetoric could push demonstrations over the edge into chaos.” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) mocked Mamdani as a “clown,” saying a mayor can “fix a pothole and take out the trash” but has no power to order arrests. NBA star Kyle Kuzma called Mamdani “a mayor playing president.”
The mayor’s fixation on the world’s only Jewish state extends to his administration’s attempts to meet with leaders of adversarial countries. Mamdani’s international affairs commissioner arranged a meeting with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, the representative of a regime in open conflict with the United States that kills its own citizens who oppose the government. Iran’s leaders have spent decades chanting “Death to America!” and vowing to destroy Israel.
The U.S. State Department intervened to prevent the meeting, calling it “unconscionable.” The federal government previously blocked Mamdani’s planned meeting with Colombia’s president, who posted “Heil Hitler” on social media.
The day after he posted his video, Mamdani’s official message marking Tisha B’Av—a day of fasting and Jewish mourning—mentioned neither Israel nor the destruction of the two Jewish Temples in Jerusalem the date commemorates. As the day’s fast was observed, an assailant shouting Allahu Akbar (Arabic for “God is great”) stabbed two men: a Jew leaving a synagogue after prayers and an Asian man. The attack underscored that violence against Jews does not end with Jews.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations called the Netanyahu video “outrageous, slanderous and dangerous.” Its statement continued: “Mayor Mamdani has repeatedly demonstrated an obsessive hostility toward Israel that is wholly incompatible with his obligation to represent all New Yorkers. He has neither the authority nor the expertise to conduct foreign policy from City Hall. He must end this dangerous political theater and focus on governing a city confronting serious challenges, including the persistent threat of antisemitism.”
Even after the stabbing, the mayor has refused to engage with calls to tone down his anti-Israel rhetoric. Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, stated that “Mamdani is contributing to a climate in which Jewish New Yorkers are increasingly targeted and unsafe.”
‘Not an activist anymore’
Mamdani has a history of anti-Israel activity. He co-founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Maine’s Bowdoin College and is one of the most prominent Democratic Socialists of America politicians in office. He refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, supports the BDS movement against Israel and criticized its government just a day after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
He has professed his “love” for five men convicted of sending $12 million to Hamas and repeatedly refused to condemn “Globalize the intifada,” a call to attack Jews worldwide. Running for office, Mamdani promised Jews that they would be safe in the city under his administration.
On his first day in office, Mamdani revoked two executive orders: one that directed city agencies to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism and another that prevented boycott campaigns against Israel. Months later, he vetoed buffer-zone legislation requiring New York City Police Department security perimeters around schools and declined to sign a companion bill protecting houses of worship.
The City Council overrode Mamdani’s objections with a veto-proof majority in a year when the Anti-Defamation League recorded 976 antisemitic incidents in NYC, the highest in four decades.
None of his actions are accidental. At its 2025 convention, the DSA made anti-Zionism a condition of membership. National co-chair Megan Romer recently appeared on national TV, confirming the DSA platform that calls for abolishing the American two-party system and backing Palestinian “resistance,” even if it results in violence against Israelis and Jews. Romer is a member of the DSA’s Red Star, a “revolutionary Marxist-Leninist caucus” that published an article: “We Do Not Condemn Hamas, and Neither Should You.”
‘Planning their lives elsewhere’
Mamdani has pointed to falling crime numbers as evidence that his approach is working. While it’s true that New York City reported the lowest number of murders and shootings on record through May, a majority of the city’s hate crimes target Jews, even though they comprise 12% of the city’s population.
The Jewish stabbing victim, Moshe Grunhaus, was already preparing to move his family to Florida, one of a number of Jews leaving the city because of antisemitism. Martha Tabachnikova, who fled Soviet Ukraine as a child, stated: “I have no doubt in my mind that my children should be planning their lives elsewhere.”
Some Jewish leaders are urging residents to stay put. Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz called leaving “an enormous mistake,” urging Jews to stand up for themselves and build non-Jewish alliances rather than quit the city. Jews have lived there since 1654.
Points to consider:
1. A mayor’s first duty is the safety of all residents.
Mamdani claims that his fight is with a foreign government, not with Jews. However, he revoked the city’s antisemitism definition, vetoed NYPD security perimeters around schools and refused to sign protections for houses of worship. Every one of those decisions was made in New York about New Yorkers. A blessing sent to the Jewish community on a day of commemoration and mourning does not cover for them. His own residents are his responsibility, and they are the ones paying for his obsession.
2. Repeating false accusations against Israel does not make them true.
Mamdani’s video called Israel’s leader a “war criminal” and Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza a “genocide,” citing casualty figures by the terrorist organization while never mentioning the Oct. 7 massacre that started the war, the hostages dragged into the Gaza Strip or the Hamas terrorists still holding their own citizens hostage. Israel is fighting a war it did not choose against an enemy sworn to its destruction. Repeating lies to millions does not make them true. It makes attacks against Jews more likely.
3. Mayors do not conduct foreign policy.
The Constitution assigns foreign affairs to the federal government, not city governments. That is why the Trump administration has twice stopped Mamdani and his staff from meeting with foreign leaders, recently calling a planned sit-down with Iran’s ambassador “unconscionable.” New Yorkers elected a mayor to run America’s largest city, not to open channels to the nation’s adversaries.
4. Singling out Israel is not a principle; it is an obsession.
The only world leader Mamdani has moved to arrest is Israel’s. Every September, the U.N. General Assembly brings world leaders to New York who have starved their own populations, imprisoned political opponents and slaughtered civilians by the hundreds of thousands—none of whom he has targeted. He has not called for detaining the leaders of Sudan or Russia. Holding one country to a standard applied to no other is not principle. It is a double standard too often targeting Israel.
