Trump says Netanyahu won’t be arrested despite Mamdani threat

President Donald Trump said Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “will not be arrested” when he visits New York in September, pushing back on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s suggestion that such an arrest might occur.

Mamdani said New York City’s legal department was discussing the possibility of arresting Netanyahu while the prime minister was in town to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

“I believe Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani told The New York Times.Report” podcast.

“He is a war criminal accused by the United States. International Criminal Court. And what you will see is that this view has been adopted by many people purely as a result of what they have done in recent years,” the mayor said.

“Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested in any way, under any circumstances, while he is in the United States,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Monday.

“He is fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recently killed 52,000 innocent protesters and has spent the last 47 years killing American soldiers and others,” Trump wrote. “The only people who need to be arrested are the people who dragged Iran into this unprecedented SPIRAL OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION, an issue previous Presidents should have addressed years ago!”

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on November 21, 2024, claiming that Netanyahu was responsible for “the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and the deliberate attack on civilians in Gaza” and “crimes against humanity, murder, cruelty and other inhumane acts, from at least October 8, 2023 to at least May 20, 2024.”

The case concerns Israel’s war on Gaza following the attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023.

Netanyahu’s office on Sunday criticized 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 to X. “The fake arrest warrant for Prime Minister Netanyahu was issued by disgraced former ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, just days before sexual harassment allegations against him were made public.”

“Instead of supporting Khan’s criminal behavior, Mr. Mamdani should focus on repairing the damage his policies have caused in New York,” the post said. “Like Karim Khan, Mamdani appears interested in diverting public attention from his own follies and attacking the leader of the Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East.”