NEW YORK — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel released a video broadside against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, one of his most high-profile critics in the United States, hours before CNN aired a new interview in which the mayor again called the prime minister a war criminal.

Mamdani has called on the federal government to arrest Netanyahu, who is expected to arrive in New York this week to address the U.N. General Assembly. In the video posted Tuesday, the prime minister falsely accused the mayor of supporting Hamas and inciting riots against Jewish New Yorkers.

Addressing the mayor directly, the prime minister said he was coming to the U.N. “to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers” and “to tell the truth about you.”

Mamdani, New York’s first Muslim mayor and an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights, has condemned Hamas as a terrorist organization and described the attack it led against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as “a horrific war crime.”

And while New York has seen an increase in antisemitic hate crimes since the Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of the Gaza Strip, as well as widespread pro-Palestinian demonstrations, there have been no riots targeting Jewish New Yorkers in the city since Mamdani was elected mayor in November or during his time serving in the state Assembly.

Netanyahu is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, which has accused him of war crimes in Gaza; he vigorously denies the charges. After Mamdani’s previous comments calling Netanyahu a war criminal outraged many pro-Israel Jewish leaders, the mayor’s office convened a meeting at which prominent rabbis urged the mayor to tone down his rhetoric on Israel and its leaders.

Asked about Netanyahu’s remarks at an unrelated news conference Tuesday morning, Mamdani said, “We all know that what the prime minister has said in that video is not true.”

On Monday night, CNN released clips from a wide-ranging interview with Mamdani, which also touched on his working relationship with President Donald Trump and his desire to see the Democratic Party focus on policies to lift up the working class. The full interview aired Tuesday afternoon.

In one part of the interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Mamdani was asked directly about his opinion of Netanyahu, and he said he owed it to New Yorkers to share his honest views.

“When it comes to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the mayor said, “I have described him as I believe him to be: a war criminal and an architect of a horrific genocide of the Palestinian people.”

Mamdani has described Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza as genocide, a claim that has upset many pro-Israel Jewish leaders. A United Nations commission and international and Israeli human rights groups have also said that Israel’s actions amounted to genocide.

During the campaign, Mamdani pledged to have the Police Department execute the International Criminal Court warrant against Netanyahu if he were to come to New York. He repeated his desire to do so in an interview with The New York Times in July. But days later, the mayor released a video saying the city’s Law Department had told him the city did not have the authority to arrest the prime minister, and challenged the federal government to do so.

Netanyahu, who is in the midst of a pivotal electoral campaign in Israel, has frequently condemned the mayor, calling him a danger to Jewish New Yorkers. On the second day of Mamdani’s term, the Israeli government accused him of antisemitism, citing his decision to cancel two executive orders signed by his predecessor, which had barred city agencies from boycotting Israel and defined some criticism of Israel as antisemitic.

While Mamdani’s stance on Israel has caused deep unease among many Jews in New York, which has the largest Jewish population outside Israel, many others have supported the mayor, especially his fellow progressives. On Monday, Mamdani attended a meal marking the end of the Yom Kippur fast at the home of Ruth Messinger, a political ally who has served as Manhattan borough president and as the president and CEO of the American Jewish World Service.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Liam Stack/Dave Sanders
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