For a man elected to run New York City, Zohran Mamdani spends a remarkable amount of time thinking about Israel.Before he has solved the city’s affordability crisis, before New Yorkers feel safer on the subway, before families see cleaner streets, better schools or a government that simply works, the socialist Mamdani has chosen to make the Jewish state and its leader a defining obsession — Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu.He has publicly declared that he would seek to have Israel’s prime minister arrested if Netanyahu came to New York.Whether or not such a thing could ever happen is beside the point.
A New York City mayor has no meaningful role in international criminal law or American foreign policy.Yet this became one of Mamdani’s earliest and most high-profile priorities, and now he admits he doesn't have the legal authority to do so.MAMDANI SAYS NYC IS EXPLORING WHETHER IT CAN ARREST NETANYAHU IF ISRAELI LEADER VISITS FOR UN GENERAL ASSEMBLYMayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a rally in New York alongside 1199SEIU members and immigration advocates after the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration can revoke protections for Haitians and Syrians.
(Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)Think about that.The mayor of America’s largest city looked across the ocean before looking across his own boroughs.
That tells you something.It tells you where his passion lives.
It tells you what keeps him up at night and it tells you that, for all the campaign rhetoric about housing, transit and working families, Israel occupies an extraordinary place in his political imagination.So, I’m calling him the first MIGA Mayor: Make Israel Great Again.The pattern did not begin there.Among the earliest actions of his new administration was revoking New York City’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.
Supporters argued that the definition could chill legitimate criticism of Israel.Critics saw s...