Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a press conference in Jerusalem on June 15, 2026.
Ronen Zvrun | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump said Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “will not be arrested” when he visits New York in September, brushing aside Mayor Zoran Mamdani’s suggestion that he could be arrested.
Mamdani said the New York City Attorney’s Office is considering the possibility of arresting Netanyahu while he is in the city to attend the United Nations General Assembly.
“I believe Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said on the New York Times podcast “The Interview,” published Saturday.
“He’s a war criminal, he’s been indicted by the International Criminal Court, and you can see that that’s a view that a lot of people have purely because of what his actions have caused over the last few years,” the mayor said.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested in any way, shape or form while in the United States,” President Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Monday.
“He is at war with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recently killed 52,000 innocent protesters and has killed American soldiers and others over the past 47 years,” Trump said. “The only people who should be arrested are those who led Iran into this unprecedented spiral of death and destruction, something that previous presidents should have addressed years ago!”
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Netanyahu on November 21, 2024, holding him responsible for “war crimes of deliberately directing starvation and attacks on civilians as a means of warfare” in Gaza, and “crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhuman acts from at least October 8, 2023 until at least May 20, 2024.”
The incident is related to Israel’s war on Gaza following the attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Sunday condemned the ICC and Mamdani.
“The ICC is a kangaroo court with no jurisdiction over Americans or Israelis,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement on X. “The fake arrest warrant against Prime Minister Netanyahu was issued by disgraced former ICC prosecutor Karim Khan days before allegations of sexual misconduct against him became public.”
“Instead of supporting Mr. Khan’s criminal actions, Mr. Mamdani should focus on repairing the damage his policies have caused to New York,” the post said. “Like Karim Khan, Mamdani seems interested in diverting public attention from his own foibles and attacking the leadership of the Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East.”
