NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani called it “strange” when Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked him at the U.N., after the mayor had sought the Israeli leader’s arrest.
Fox News reported that Mamdani made the comments Thursday on podcaster Theo Von’s show, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named him during a late-September address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Netanyahu did not soft-pedal the criticism. From the U.N. hall, he tied Mamdani to what he called lies about Israel and its soldiers and labeled him the “antisemitic mayor of New York.”
Mamdani’s reaction was not apology or retreat. He cast the call-out as odd timing and said the Israeli leader was trying to change the subject.
That posture lands against Mamdani’s own record. During his mayoral campaign he promised to have Netanyahu arrested. He later urged the federal government to carry out an International Criminal Court arrest warrant if the Israeli prime minister visited New York, and he said the United States should have joined the ICC and honored every warrant it issued.
Netanyahu’s speech came during the 81st session of the General Assembly, with a photo caption placing the remarks on Sept. 24, 2026, at U.N. headquarters in New York City. He spoke directly to critics of Israel inside and outside the chamber.
In the lines aimed at City Hall, Netanyahu said: “So, to all those spreading these lies about my country and about our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the antisemitic mayor of New York, I say this: Shame on you.”
He continued: “Shame on you for distorting the facts. Shame on you for inverting victim and aggressor. Shame on you for spitting in the face of truth, Mr. Mamdani.”
Those words followed months of public friction over the ICC’s November 2024 warrant, which the court issued over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Netanyahu and the Israeli government have rejected the allegations and challenged the court’s actions. Mamdani has treated the warrant as something Washington should enforce.
Related coverage has tracked how Netanyahu accused Mamdani of incitement ahead of U.N.-season scrutiny in New York.
On the podcast, Von pressed the mayor on the personal edge of the moment. “And he called you out too,” Von said. “Was that weird? Was that scary?”
“It was strange,” Mamdani answered. He said he had been in a meeting with the prime minister of the Netherlands at the LGBTQ center in downtown Manhattan, then learned what Netanyahu had said at the U.N.
“I mean, I was, I was having a meeting with the prime minister of the Netherlands at the LGBTQ center in downtown Manhattan,” Mamdani said. “Then I get back from that meeting, and it’s like, ‘Oh, by the way, here’s what he was saying at the U.N.’”
Von asked whether the clash felt personal. Mamdani refused that frame. He said Netanyahu was naming people to muddy accountability.
“All of this is an attempt to distract from responsibility, name as many people as possible, try and make it into a back and forth,” Mamdani said. “It’s not about me and him. It’s about the fact that he’s the architect of a genocide.”
He added: “And it’s like, ‘Yeah, if I was the architect of a genocide, I would probably talk about anything but that.’”
That charge is Mamdani’s language, not an adjudicated finding in the reporting. It is also the kind of rhetoric that helps explain why Israel’s prime minister answered him by name before a world body meeting in Mamdani’s own city.
Von put the practical question on the table: “But if you had your say, we would have arrested the guy, you think?”
Mamdani’s answer went beyond New York’s city limits. “If I had my say, the U.S. government would have joined the ICC, honored every single warrant that they’ve issued,” he said.
That is the core sequence voters can weigh without spin. First came the campaign promise to arrest Netanyahu. Then came the call for federal execution of the ICC warrant on a New York visit. Then came the claim that Washington should join the court and honor every warrant. Only after Netanyahu answered from the U.N. podium did Mamdani describe the exchange as strange and cast it as a distraction.
Readers following the mayor’s shifting public posture can also weigh how Mamdani once vowed to arrest Netanyahu and later calibrated how far he would go in street politics around the same fight.
City mayors do not control U.S. treaty policy or federal arrest decisions. Mamdani said the quiet part anyway. He wanted the United States inside the ICC system and ready to treat its warrants as binding, including against the leader of a close American partner.
The same dispute has already produced reciprocal hard talk, including an episode in which Israel’s U.N. ambassador demanded accountability for Mamdani over protest pressure tied to Netanyahu.
The November 2024 warrant is the legal hook Mamdani keeps citing. Reporting states the ICC issued it over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel calls the case illegitimate. Mamdani calls enforcement a moral duty and brands Netanyahu in sweeping terms on a comedy podcast.
Von, for his part, called the spectacle bizarre. The interview framing mattered because it pulled a foreign-policy collision into entertainment media, where Mamdani repeated the genocide label and the arrest agenda without the constraints of a City Hall press conference.
Separate reporting has also covered how Mamdani urged the U.S. to join the ICC and enforce the Netanyahu warrant while using that same genocide rhetoric.
None of this is abstract for New York. The U.N. sits in Manhattan. World leaders move through the city every fall. A mayor who campaigns on arresting one of them is not a bystander when that leader answers from the General Assembly floor.
Federal reality still bounds the stunt. The United States has not joined the ICC in the account given here, and the package does not show a U.S. arrest of Netanyahu. What it does show is a big-city mayor lobbying for that outcome and then describing the predictable diplomatic blowback as strange.
Mamdani’s theory of the case is simple in his own words: Netanyahu named critics to escape responsibility. Netanyahu’s theory is just as plain in his own words: Mamdani distorted facts, inverted victim and aggressor, and earned public shame.
American audiences can test both claims against conduct. A New York mayor spent political capital on an ICC warrant against an Israeli prime minister, used genocide language on a podcast, and then treated a U.N. rebuttal as an odd interruption between meetings.
Alliance politics in Washington remain their own track, including moments when Vance told Israel that American interests come first even in tense stretches with Netanyahu. Mamdani’s lane is different. He is not negotiating a bilateral agenda. He is the mayor of New York, using local celebrity and national media to push arrest politics against a visiting head of government.
That choice has consequences for the city’s reputation as a serious host of diplomacy. It also has consequences for Jewish New Yorkers who hear their mayor trade in maximal charges while an Israeli prime minister answers with an antisemitism accusation from the U.N. floor.
Law-and-order voters did not hire City Hall to freelance international criminal policy. They hired it to run streets, subways, and public safety. Mamdani used the platform anyway, then acted surprised when the target talked back.
When a mayor campaigns on arresting an allied nation’s leader, a U.N. rebuke is not strange. It is the bill coming due.
