cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49644560
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he was reviewing whether his administration could arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if as expected the Israeli prime minister visits the city for the UN general assembly in September.
Mamdani’s comments on Saturday’s episode of the New York Times’s the Interview podcast echoed ones he had made to the publication as he successfully ran for mayor last fall.
“I believe that prime minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said, referring to the Dutch city that is home to the international criminal court, which issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November 2024 over alleged war crimes in Gaza. “He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the international criminal court, and what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these past many years.”
Mamdani said it was unclear to him whether he has the legal authority to order the New York police department (NYPD), which he oversees, to detain a foreign leader like Netanyahu. But he said he was in “an active conversation” with the city’s law department about the matter.
Can’t he just create a stalemate where the NYPD blocks Netanyahu’s car and then call the feds?
They would probably do nothing with him, but Mamdani would have done his part, Netanyahu would have an horrible time, and the trump administration would have once again to explain their acts, maybe loosing a few voters along the way.
But maybe it would make things even worse, IDK.
Maybe let’s do it but with the New York national guard
Not that the federal police are likely to act on it, as much as I’d love otherwise.
When he took office, I thought to myself “this guy is not going to be able to stay away from geopolitics and eventually do something really stupid”
Its going to be dope as hell when the civil war pops off with NYPD vs ICE in a shootout in Manhattan.
In what world is the NYPD on the people’s side?
Whomever wins, we lose.
Ha I doubt Mamdani would make his police chief order NYPD to forcefully grab Netanyahu if ICE (or any other federal force) was physically protecting him. The furthest I could see it escalating is NYPD cops staring at his escort.
I’m sure the NYPD has plenty of Palestinian volunteers.
Hit it covertly and dump him in some embassy that absolutely would extradite him. Or sneakily get him into a truck and just chauffeur him.
Legal? Probably not.
But that shit has flown the chicken coop.
Don’t forget the New York national guard
To protect a corrupt Jewish warlord citizen of Israel… I don’t know if there’s irony there but it does seem like some kind of cosmic joke.
This is a brilliant political move. It’s a rhetorical technique called Thinking Past the Sale; you make people debate a question that assumes the thing you want to convince them of, like a car salesman asking you to picture what you’ll do after you’ve bought the car. My favorite example is from the old Trix cereal commercials. Forget the question of whether Trix is any good. The question is, since Trix is so desirable, does the rabbit get any?
Mamdani can’t legally arrest Netanyahu for being a war criminal, but since we’re talking about the question of legality, look at the idea he sneakily got us to buy, and the words he got the media to publish.
I remember settling this as a kid, Trix are for kids, the commercial was pretty clear on that.
Here’s hoping he resists arrest, and a jumpy rookie mistakes his cell phone for a Glock.
