On Tisha B'Av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar marking the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the long history of catastrophes that followed, an assailant armed with a knife walked up to two men on Manhattan's Upper West Side and stabbed them.One wore a yarmulke.Witnesses said the assailant shouted, "Allahu Akbar." The victims, ages 50 and 57, survived.
A suspect is in custody, and police are examining the motive.But New York City did not need to wait for a formal designation to understand the gravity of the crime that had been perpetrated.Only a day earlier, Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of the city with the largest Jewish community in the Diaspora, released a video accusing Israel of war crimes and genocide — and declared that Benjamin Netanyahu, the elected leader of the region's only democracy, should be arrested.SUSPECT ARRESTED AFTER ALLEGEDLY YELLING ‘ALLAHU AKBAR,' STABBING 2 MEN IN NYC ATTACKFILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently admitted that he lacks the legal authority to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after admitting his office was looking into the potential action.
(Fox News Digital/Deirdre Heavey)The mayor of an American city has no such power.Municipal leaders are forbidden by law from carrying out their own foreign policy.
Nevertheless, Mamdani’s public relations stunt, amplified not only on social media but by the media of record, used language decrying the Jewish state as a criminal enterprise and that its defenders are fair game, setting the stage for bloodshed.Jewish organizations had warned that the climate in the city was becoming dangerous.Their prescient warnings became prophetic as police officers cleaned up the crime scene.It would not be appropriate to claim that any politician placed the weapon in the hands of the man who allegedly stabbed two innocent New Yorkers while attempting to terrorize the American Jewish community.JEWISH LEADERS FAULT MAMDANI RHETORIC AS UPPER WEST SIDE STABBING...