{"id":97891,"date":"2026-07-20T06:45:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T06:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/mamdani-active-conversation-underway-over-whether-nyc-can-arrest-netanyahu-he-belongs-in-the-hague\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T06:45:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T06:45:34","slug":"mamdani-active-conversation-underway-over-whether-nyc-can-arrest-netanyahu-he-belongs-in-the-hague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/mamdani-active-conversation-underway-over-whether-nyc-can-arrest-netanyahu-he-belongs-in-the-hague\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani: &quot;Active Conversation\u201d Underway Over Whether NYC Can Arrest Netanyahu&#8211;He &#8220;Belongs in The Hague&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani hedged when asked if he is planning to carry out his campaign pledge to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court when he arrives in the city later this year for the United Nations General Assembly in September.   &#8220;I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,&#8221; the mayor told NYT&#8217;s Lulu Garcia-Navarro. &#8220;He&#8217;s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court.&#8221;  &#8220;Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that&#8217;s what we will do. But we won&#8217;t be writing our own laws to that end.&#8221;  Mamdani said the question is the subject of an active conversation with the city&#8217;s legal department, and he is going to &#8220;follow the law.&#8221; Whether he meant international law, federal law, or city law remains unclear.   Here&#8217;s his full interview, published Saturday with NYT&#8217;s Lulu Garcia-Navarro:   <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6nbzdlgNyV0?si=vm_fGGjt9jbes3H1\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>  <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Around minute 25]  LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: Israel&#8217;s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is perhaps planning to visit New York for the U.N. General Assembly. You pledged during your campaign, and after you won, to order his arrest in compliance with the International Criminal Court warrant. What will happen if he comes in September?  ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague. He&#8217;s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court. And what you will find is that that is an opinion held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.  I&#8217;ve also said that I will follow the laws that we have here in New York City, because I believe that there is an importance in following the law as a leader who presides over our city, and that&#8217;s something that I plan to do.  LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: Meaning? I&#8217;m sorry, I don&#8217;t understand what that means.  ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Meaning that whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that&#8217;s what we will do. But we won&#8217;t be writing our own laws to that end.  LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: What does the law allow you to do?  ZOHRAN MAMDANI: That&#8217;s an active conversation with our legal department, in seeing what the prospects are that we have here in our municipality.  However, what we&#8217;ve seen at the national level is a desire sometimes to write your own laws, to go outside of the bounds of legality. That&#8217;s not something we have an interest in.  LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO: Normally, when people come to a U.N. General Assembly, they&#8217;re granted a sort of immunity because it is the seat of the United Nations. Is that what you&#8217;re thinking-that you&#8217;ll honor that-or are you actively looking to see if you can actually arrest him?  ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I think we are looking at all of our legal obligations, and one of them is with regard to the United Nations.  But the other part of this is that we&#8217;re not talking about a personal assessment of Benjamin Netanyahu. We&#8217;re talking about the International Criminal Court and the fact that they have a warrant out for this prime minister&#8217;s arrest.  I think it&#8217;s important to talk about the weight that that has as a charge, and also that, as the mayor of New York City, I&#8217;ll be following the laws of New York City. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/video\/2026\/07\/19\/mamdani_active_conversation_with_our_legal_department_about_whether_nyc_has_authority_to_arrest_netanyahu_for_icc.html\">RealClearPolitics Videos<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani hedged when asked if he is planning to carry out his campaign pledge to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court when he arrives in the city later this year for the United Nations General Assembly in September. &#8220;I believe that Prime Minister [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[29940,3443,11792,8840,4482,24811,29941,89,8080,3581],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97891"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fallsurfing.net\/firstnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}