New York City communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent months promising to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His lawyers finally delivered the answer anybody familiar with American law could see coming.
“We do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant,” Mamdani admitted Tuesday.
His administration reviewed “every avenue” for using the International Criminal Court warrant if Netanyahu visits New York for the United Nations General Assembly in September. City lawyers found no legal path, proving that Mamdani’s campaign pledge was never within the mayor’s power.
Mamdani still called Netanyahu a war criminal and demanded that the federal government join the ICC and execute the warrant, while also declaring Netanyahu unwelcome in New York.
I hate to be the one to break it to the Democratic Socialist, but mayors don’t decide who enters the United States. They don’t join international courts, recognize foreign warrants, conduct diplomacy, or set federal criminal policy.
All Mamdani can do is offer his opinion, but City Hall has no separate foreign policy.
Neither the United States nor Israel is a party to the Rome Statute, which created the ICC. Congress also barred state and local agencies from cooperating with ICC requests, providing support to the court, or helping surrender people to its custody.