NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged America to join the ICC and enforce Netanyahu’s arrest warrant, branding the Israeli prime minister the architect of a horrific genocide.
In a podcast interview that aired Thursday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the United States should join the International Criminal Court and enforce its warrants for everyone, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Speaking with comedian Theo Von on “This Past Weekend,” the mayor framed Netanyahu as central to the conflict in Gaza and pressed Washington to reverse long-standing American policy. The United States is not an ICC member and does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction.
The New York Post reported Mamdani’s remarks as a sharp break from the stance of US officials who had already rejected the court’s move against Israel’s leader.
“I believe that the US government should join the ICC. It should enforce its warrants for everyone,” Mamdani said.
"When you ask about the prime minister, we’re talking about the architect of a horrific genocide."
He added that if he had his say, “the US government would have joined the ICC and honored every single warrant that they’ve issued.” Von answered, “F*** yeah.”
This was not Mamdani’s first turn at the same target. During the mayoral campaign, he vowed he would have Netanyahu arrested if the Israeli leader ever stepped foot in New York City.
That promise collapsed this summer. In July, after reviewing potential legal avenues, Mamdani acknowledged he had no power to enforce the 2024 ICC warrant and backed down. The court has 124 member states and can prosecute certain crimes by nationals of those states or on their territory. Israel, like the United States, is not a member and rejects the court’s authority.
The podcast pitch now shifts the job to Washington. Instead of City Hall making an arrest it cannot make, Mamdani wants the federal government to join the tribunal and carry out its warrants.
That demand lands against a clear record. Members of the Biden administration and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries slammed the Netanyahu warrant at the time as “shameful,” “unserious,” and “troubling.”
Local fights over Mamdani’s priorities have already drawn scrutiny, from a judge voiding rushed second-home tax notices to anger over city giveaways.
Last month Netanyahu was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. In his speech he tore into Mamdani, claiming Jews no longer feel safe in the city under the mayor and ripping him for accusing the Jewish state of genocide in Gaza. He also slammed Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, for liking anti-Israel social media posts.
Mamdani called the attacks “strange.” He said he had been meeting the prime minister of the Netherlands at an LGBTQ center in downtown Manhattan when he learned what Netanyahu had said at the UN.
"All of this is an attempt to distract from responsibility. If I was the architect of a genocide, I would probably talk about anything but that."
The sequence is plain. A campaign threat of arrest gave way to a July admission of no legal path. A UN clash followed. Now the mayor is back on a popular podcast telling America to join a court it has refused and to enforce a warrant US leaders already called unserious.
Critics of City Hall have also hammered Mamdani’s free Met Opera lottery as a sign of misplaced focus while core services compete for attention.
Mamdani governs a city still absorbing the costs of disorder, strained budgets, and bitter arguments over public safety. Choosing the ICC fight puts him on the side of a tribunal Washington has kept at arm’s length for good reason: it claims reach over non-members and has aimed that claim at a close American ally.
The same political orbit has produced street theater. A Mamdani-backed socialist congressional nominee was arrested at an anti-Netanyahu protest near the UN, underscoring how the mayor’s lane and the activist lane keep overlapping.
High-level contacts have not changed the pattern. Coverage of Trump’s visit to Gracie Mansion and later talk of a White House invitation showed the mayor can sit across from national leaders without dropping the foreign-policy posture that defines him to critics.
None of that alters the legal facts on the table. The ICC warrant exists. The United States is not a party to the court. New York’s mayor already conceded he cannot enforce it locally. His new answer is to pull the entire country into the court’s system so the warrant can be honored anyway.
Voters hired a mayor to run the largest city in America. They did not hire a deputy for The Hague.
Chasing international arrest warrants against a US ally is a strange substitute for fixing the problems New Yorkers actually face.
