Mamdani’s Lament

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s call for the United States of America to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel would be laughable were it not so sinister. Hizzoner made the pitch in a video released on Tuesday night that has racked up 100 million views on X. Seated behind a desk, with ominous music playing and the American and New York State flags in the background, Mr. Mamdani launched a legion of lies against the Jewish state.The video’s bluster — calling Mr. Netanyahu a “war criminal” and declaring that he is “not welcome in New York City” — masks Mr. Mamdani’s failure. The mayor concedes that his administration has “reviewed every avenue available” to determine if the city could sic the NYPD on Mr. Netanyahu to execute the arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court. Alas, he reports, “we do not have the independent legal authority.”As our A.R. Hoffman reports, any move by Mr. Mamdani to arrest the prime minister would put the mayor and not the premier on the wrong side of the law. Mr. Netanyahu intends to appear at the United Nations to address its General Assembly and therefore travels under the protective overhang of an accord from 1947 that grants immunity. Plus too, neither America nor Israel are parties to the ICC. America is now set against the court.The federales also lack authority to arrest Mr. Netanyahu. The “Hague Invasion Act” requires the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.” Mr. Trump has already declared that “Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.”Mr. Mamdani’s claims about Mr. Netanyahu are just as flimsy as his pretext for angling for his arrest. He calls Israel’s leader the “architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people,” never mind that the genocide slander is a figment of leftist imaginations. If there is an architect of Gaza’s catastrophe, it is the late leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, who launched the massacres of October 7, 2023. Mr. Mamdani is mum on Sinwar and Hamas.The mayor holds Mr. Netanyahu responsible for “killing of more than 73,000 people,” but nowhere does he mention that Hamas’s count does not distinguish between terrorists and civilians. Nor does Mr. Mamdani tell New Yorkers that Hamas hijacked the civilian infrastructure, or that it kept some 250 hostages in appalling conditions, or that it built an underground network of terror tunnels to support Palestinian Arab aggression.Mr. Mamdani invokes “journalists” slain by Israel, but omits the scandal at the Committee To Protect Journalists over how many of these same journalists were members of Hamas’s army. One count puts the number at somewhere around 60 percent. The mayor cites aid workers who have come under attack without reference to the way in which the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees was acting as an arm of Hamas.Among Israelis, even Mr. Netanyahu’s political adversaries are indignant over Mr. Mamdani’s message. Those who have the most cause for anger, though, are New Yorkers who want their mayor to better their city rather than cosplaying at the United Nations. For all of Mr. Mamdani’s championing of international law, he is advocating what amounts to an unlawful kidnapping that would violate American statute and the United Nations treaty.

Mamdani’s Lament

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