NYC Mayor's Bold Move: Why He Can't Arrest Netanyahu

Mayor Zohran Mamdani backed down in his efforts to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu in New York City, admitting in a video statement Tuesday night that he doesn’t have the legal authority – while slamming the Israeli prime minister as an unwelcome “war criminal.”

The pro-Palestinian, socialist pol said that despite his administration reviewing “every avenue available” to find a legal loophole to take Netanyahu into custody, they don’t have the authority in a video posted to X. 

“It’s clear we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant,” a frustrated Mamdani said, referencing an International Criminal Court 2024 warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest over alleged war crimes in Gaza — an order the US does not recognize.

The backpedaling comes one day after President Trump blasted the socialist Democrat’s scheme in a post to Truth Social Monday. 

“Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America,” Trump said in the post, which didn’t name Mamdani. 

Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Manhattan in September to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said Mamdani’s threats don’t faze the prime minister.

“But it only shows what we are dealing with today, with the elements that seek to instigate, to incite. And Mamdani is one of those forces,” Danon exclusively told The Post. 

Danon blasted Mamdani in a scathing post on X: “You were elected to serve New Yorkers, not Hamas’ propaganda.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center noted in a statement that Mamdani’s address made “no mention of Hamas or the October 7 massacre of innocent civilians.”

“Instead, he delivered a sweeping moral indictment of Israel while erasing the terrorist atrocities that ignited this war,” the Jewish human rights organization continued.

“Appeals to universal humanity and justice ring hollow when they exclude the victims whose suffering does not fit a preferred political narrative.”

Although Hizzoner was forced to wave the white flag Tuesday, he continued to rail against the Israeli prime minister.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people,” he said.

The anti-Israel mayor — who has made accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza a focal point of a socialist ideology that has helped thrust him into the national spotlight  – vowed during last year’s campaign that, if elected, he’d have Netanyahu arrested if he ever came to the Big Apple.

That promise resurfaced Saturday when Mamdani argued that Netanyahu “belongs in The Hague” during a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times.   

Mamdani’s wife has also come under fire for controversial comments about the US and Israel.  

Rama Duwaji has been accused of liking since-deleted social media posts praising Palestinian terror groups and others attacking US service members for assisting the Jewish state. 

And she once liked a social media post claiming Hamas’ brutal rape of Israelis during the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack was a “mass hoax.” 

Mamdani has defended his wife as a private person.

“She is her own person,” he said about the Syrian-American artist. “She is an incredible artist, and yet so much of how she engages with the world is framed through her being my wife.”