Netanyahu accuses Mamdani of ‘hate speech’ after mayor’s video address

TEL AVIV – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded directly to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s calls for his arrest in an interview on July 26, accusing the mayor of “fomenting hate” and referring to a video address that Mamdani made last week as “hate speech”.

In an appearance on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, Netanyahu criticised the mayor for the video, released on July 21, in which Mamdani called him a “war criminal”, condemned the war in the Gaza Strip and urged the US government to enforce an International Criminal Court warrant for the prime minister’s arrest.

“He’s fomenting hate,” Netanyahu said, adding, “He’s trying to turn one group against the other.”

The Israeli prime minister also said he did not think it was “accidental” that a Jewish man was stabbed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan after the mayor released the video.

In the attacks in New York City on July 23, the assailant first stabbed a 57-year-old Asian man, Chok Sung, and then stabbed the Jewish man, Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus, the police said. He yelled “Allahu akbar” during both attacks, according to accounts from the victims and witnesses.

The police arrested Raul Morales in the stabbings and charged him on July 24 with two counts of attempted murder as a hate crime.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said detectives were still investigating Morales’ motive. While Morales did not have a history of mental health issues documented with the department, she added, it appeared that his mental state might have played a role in the attacks.

Both victims survived the stabbings.

“I speak to Jewish Americans in New York, and they’re afraid right now,” Netanyahu said in the Fox News interview.

Arguing that Mamdani was creating divisions among New Yorkers, he said, “He’s supposed to be the mayor of all New Yorkers, Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone.”

Asked about Netanyahu’s comments on July 26, Mamdani’s spokesman Joe Calvello pointed to a New York Post interview with the mayor on July 25, in which Mamdani said he was committed to countering anti-Semitism across the city.

“We know that while Jewish New Yorkers constitute a minority in the city, they continue to comprise a majority of the victims of all hate crimes,” Mamdani told the Post. “This is a city that will not only look to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe; we also look to celebrate and cherish Jewish New Yorkers.”

A week ago, Mamdani told The New York Times that he was in “active conversation” with city lawyers about the prospect of arresting Netanyahu, should the Israeli leader come to New York City – a pledge Mamdani made while campaigning.

On July 21, he released the video, in which he said that while the city’s Law Department had looked into the matter, the city did not have the power to make the arrest. The video has been viewed by nearly 100 million people.

On Fox News, Netanyahu accused Mamdani of having “celebrated the Oct 7 massacre”. The mayor on July 22 condemned those attacks, in which Hamas militants crossed the border and killed more than 1,200 people, calling them “a horrific war crime”.

In his video, he called Netanyahu “the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people” in reference to the war in Gaza, in which more than 70,000 people have been killed.

Netanyahu said he still planned to come to New York City in September for the United Nations General Assembly meeting. In 2025, representatives from dozens of countries walked out of the General Assembly meeting just before Netanyahu gave a defiant speech rejecting the creation of a Palestinian state.

Some city leaders said the heightened tensions around Israel and Gaza were concerning. “This is a time when we need to bring the temperature and the rhetoric down,” City Council Speaker Julie Menin said on July 26. NYTIMES

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.