New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told podcaster Theo Von the United States should join the International Criminal Court and enforce its warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he called the architect of a horrific genocide.
In an appearance on Von’s “This Past Weekend” show that aired Thursday, the mayor went further than past campaign rhetoric and argued Washington should lock arms with the court that both the United States and Israel reject.
Mamdani framed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war-crimes target and said American power should back every warrant the court issues. The remarks revive a fight over foreign policy, Jewish safety in New York, and the limits of a mayor’s authority that has already forced him to retreat once.
The New York Post reported Mamdani’s plain demand for U.S. membership in the court known as the ICC.
He told Von:
“I believe that the US government should join the ICC. It should enforce its warrants for everyone,”
And when the conversation turned to Netanyahu specifically, Mamdani said:
“When you ask about the prime minister, we’re talking about the architect of a horrific genocide.”
Von answered with an enthusiastic “f*** yeah.” Mamdani later added that if he had his way, the U.S. government “would have joined the ICC and honored every single warrant that they’ve issued.”
The International Criminal Court is a Hague-based body with 124 member states. It claims power to prosecute certain serious crimes by nationals of member countries or crimes committed on their territory. The United States is not a member and does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction. Israel is not a member either and rejects the same authority.
In 2024 the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza. Members of the Biden administration and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) slammed that warrant as “shameful,” “unserious,” and “troubling.”
Mamdani’s podcast call asks the United States to reverse that position and treat the warrant as binding. That stance collides with the long-standing American refusal to hand domestic or allied leaders over to an unaccountable international court.
During his mayoral run, Mamdani vowed that Netanyahu would be arrested if he set foot in New York City. This summer he acknowledged he had no power to enforce the ICC warrant. In July he backed down entirely after a review found no legal avenues to make the arrest happen.
That earlier retreat is part of a longer pattern of bold promises meeting hard limits, much like the walk-back documented when Mamdani once vowed to arrest Netanyahu and later stepped away from street protests as well.
The mayor can still talk about genocide charges on a comedy podcast. He cannot order the NYPD to seize a foreign head of government who is protected by federal and diplomatic realities the city does not control.
Last month Netanyahu was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. He tore into the mayor, claiming “Jews no longer feel safe” in the city under Mamdani’s leadership. He also ripped Mamdani for accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza and slammed the mayor’s wife, Rama Duwaji, for liking anti-Israel social media posts.
Those UN remarks produced a high-profile clash already covered when Netanyahu used the UN stage to confront Mamdani over Jewish New Yorkers’ security.
Mamdani called the attacks “strange.” He said he had been meeting the prime minister of the Netherlands at an LGBTQ center in downtown Manhattan, only to learn afterward what Netanyahu had said at the UN.
He brushed the criticism aside as theater:
“All of this is an attempt to distract from responsibility.”
And he added:
“If I was the architect of a genocide, I would probably talk about anything but that.”
Netanyahu’s safety warning and Mamdani’s genocide label sit unresolved. One is the elected leader of the Jewish state speaking about diaspora fear. The other is a big-city mayor adopting the most extreme charge available against Israel’s wartime leadership.
Mamdani’s foreign-policy monologue arrives while his domestic agenda faces court orders and street-level results that undercut the image of competent control. A Staten Island judge has already forced the city to restart its second-home tax notices after due-process failures, and related litigation produced another block when a Staten Island judge blocked Mamdani’s second-home tax rollout and ordered officials to start over.
On crime and public order, enforcement numbers have moved the wrong way in plain sight. Prostitution arrests plunged nearly 60 percent on a known Queens strip even as the street trade thrived, a trend laid out in reporting on how prostitution arrests plunge under Mayor Mamdani.
The same City Hall that cannot keep basic tax notices lawful or street markets in check now lectures the federal government on which foreign leaders belong in handcuffs.
Mamdani’s ICC pitch is simple: join the court, honor every warrant, treat Netanyahu as a wanted man. The governing facts are simpler still. The United States is not a member. Israel is not a member. Senior Democrats already called the 2024 warrant shameful and unserious. The mayor himself already admitted he lacks the power to act on it inside his own city.
Calling a sitting Israeli prime minister the architect of genocide on a popular podcast may energize one activist base. It does nothing to secure Jewish neighborhoods, fix broken city processes, or persuade Washington to surrender sovereignty to a court Americans have refused for decades.
Mayors who cannot deliver lawful tax notices or basic street enforcement still find time to redesign U.S. foreign policy on comedy shows. Voters can decide which job they actually hired him to do.
