Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed he intends to travel to New York City this fall to participate in the annual United Nations General Assembly, brushing off earlier threats of arrest from the city’s mayor over an International Criminal Court (ICC) war crimes warrant. The high-stakes standoff has reignited tensions over the ongoing Gaza conflict and the role of international justice on U.S. soil.
The controversy first emerged when New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a vocal advocate for Palestinian statehood who centered his 2025 campaign on opposition to Israel’s military operation in Gaza, pledged to use city law enforcement to arrest Netanyahu upon his arrival. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024, accusing him of perpetrating war crimes during the military campaign in Gaza that began in October 2023.
Last week, however, Mamdani backed away from his pledge after a legal review by his administration concluded that the city of New York lacks independent legal authority to enforce an international arrest warrant. Mamdani still maintained that “Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City”, and urged the U.S. federal government to act on the warrant and detain the Israeli prime minister during his planned visit. He has repeatedly labeled Netanyahu a war criminal for his leadership of the Gaza operation.
Speaking to Fox News in an interview aired Sunday, Netanyahu said he is “not concerned” by Mamdani’s earlier threat, and accused the mayor of inciting intercommunal tension. “He’s supposed to be the mayor of all New Yorkers — Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone — but he’s trying to turn one group against the other,” Netanyahu said.
The Israeli prime minister tied Mamdani’s rhetoric to two recent targeted stabbings in New York that left a Jewish man and an Asian man injured. The attacks, carried out blocks apart just last Thursday, saw the suspect reportedly shout “Allahu akbar” during the assaults, according to responding law enforcement. The suspect has since been charged with hate crimes for both attacks, and both victims survived their injuries.
The stabbings drew widespread condemnation from leaders of New York’s Jewish and Asian American communities, and Netanyahu argued that the climate of division fostered by anti-Israel rhetoric has left Jewish residents of the city frightened. “Jewish New Yorkers are afraid right now,” he said.
As of Monday, Mamdani’s office had not issued a public response to Netanyahu’s comments, after declining an immediate request for comment over the weekend.
The background to the current dispute stretches back to the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants, which killed approximately 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage into Gaza. In response, Israel launched its large-scale military incursion into the Gaza Strip, which has resulted in more than 73,000 Palestinian fatalities according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. The United Nations has characterized the ministry’s casualty figures as reliable, with more than 21,000 of those killed being children.
Israel has categorically rejected the ICC’s war crimes allegations, with Netanyahu describing the charges against him as “bogus”. The planned UNGA visit, now set against the backdrop of the arrest threat controversy, is expected to draw massive protests and renewed global scrutiny of both Israel’s military campaign and U.S. policy toward the conflict.