RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 9 sourcesWASHINGTON — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is “fomenting hate” by calling the Israeli leader a war criminal who should be arrested over the war in Gaza if he visits the city for the United Nations General Assembly.
Netanyahu said he intends to be in New York in September to address the annual UN gathering of world leaders, despite the mayor's suggestion that he is not welcome. Mamdani said last week that while New York City does not have legal authority to execute an arrest warrant issued by the world's top war-crimes court, he encouraged the federal government to do so.
“He’s supposed to be the mayor of all New Yorkers — Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone,” Netanyahu said on Fox News Channel's “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo. “But he’s trying to turn one group against the other.”
Accusing Mamdani of "supporting the Hamas murderers," Netanyahu said he would be attending the UN General Assembly "to come and speak the truth, speak for Israel and the Israeli-American alliance from the podium of the United Nations."
The prime minister has become an increasingly polarizing figure over Israel's war in Gaza, which was ignited by the Octover 7, 2023, deadly attack on southern Israel by the Hamas terror group.
Israel also joined the US in starting the war against Iran on February 28 before launching a ground invasion in southern Lebanon in response to fire from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group in early March.
Netanyahu on Sunday dismissed the International Criminal Court's war crimes charges against him as “bogus.” He pointed to sexual misconduct allegations against the ICC's top prosecutor, Karim Khan, who was removed from that post on Friday, and said the warrant was an attempt to divert attention.
"He thought, if there's an indictment, I'm going to have a job. There was an indictment, and he lost his job," the premier joked.
"He lost his job because he was removed by a vast majority of nations who knew that he was a con job."
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Netanyahu said he was concerned that once-bipartisan political support for Israel in the US is at risk, particularly as progressive and far-left Democrats aligned with the Mamdani wing of the party splinter.
He alleged that the mainstream Democrats were joining the party's anti-Israel "fringe" because their families are being harassed by activists.
He also warned against rising antisemitism in the US and other Western countries, saying that when he talks to people in New York City, home to the second-largest Jewish population in the world, "Jews feel very uncomfortable.”
“And I think it’s wrong. The whole thing is wrong,” he said.
Throughout his mayoral election campaign last year, Mamdani said he would seek to order the city’s police to execute the ICC’s arrest warrant over Netanyahu's role in the war in Gaza.
But Mamdani acknowledged last week that his city did not have the legal authority to arrest Netanyahu and called on federal authorities to step in.
“I want to be equally clear, Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large,” he said in a video message.
He told New Yorkers that he understood their frustration and that expressions of protest is something the city would “always respect.”
The Hague-based court has accused Netanyahu, his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, and the former leaders of Hamas of crimes against humanity. The Hamas leaders charged by the ICC were subsequently killed by Israel, voiding their arrest warrants. The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says over 73,000 people have been killed in Israel’s offensive — roughly half of them women and children, although it does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
Some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
Trump told Netanyahu in a social media post Monday that he “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”
Netanyahu is expected in Washington this week to meet with Trump and attend funeral services for the late Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Graham, a leading defense hawk and strong supporter of Israel, died suddenly two weeks ago of a likely torn aorta. The prime minister called him an “extraordinary American patriot.”
The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.
There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.
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