UNITED NATIONS – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in a fiery speech at the United Nations, accusing the mayor of antisemitism and promoting supporters of Hamas.
“Mr. Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York,” Netanyahu said. “This isn’t the city we remember.”
The comments escalate a long-running feud between Netanyahu – the leader of a far-right Israeli government – and Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist mayor of New York.
In July, Mamdani called on the U.S. government to arrest Netanyahu during his visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, calling the Israeli prime minister a “war criminal” who is overseeing “a horrific
genocide against the Palestinian people.”
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024, alleging that he was responsible for war crimes committed against the civilian population in Gaza.
Netanyahu authorized an invasion of Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed roughly 1,200 people. Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 73,000 people, the majority of whom were women and children, according to health officials in Gaza. Its tolls do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Mamdani said in a statement that Netanyahu “used his speech to repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians.”
“Yet no lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Moments before Netanyahu began his address, Mamdani posted a video on social media of planting an olive tree at the mayor’s residence with Palestinian families from Gaza.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Israel's Netanyahu lashes out at New York Mayor Mamdani in U.N. speech
