Mayor Mamdani Accidentally Recognizes Jewish Indigeneity to Jerusalem
New York’s mayor declared the foreign policy of the United States, discovered he lacked the authority to enforce it, and then commemorated the Jewish exile from our indigenous capital
It has been a difficult week at City Hall.
Zohran Mamdani has had quite a week.
First, the mayor of New York announced that Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, is not welcome in his city, and should be arrested if he arrives for the United Nations General Assembly.
Then his lawyers gently explained that New York City is not a sovereign nation.
This apparently came as news.
After his administration “reviewed every avenue available under applicable law,” Mamdani admitted that the city possesses no independent authority to execute the International Criminal Court’s warrant.
An exhaustive legal investigation had concluded that the mayor of New York is, legally speaking, the mayor of New York.
So, Secretary of State, Attorney General, President and Supreme Commander of the Brooklyn People’s Revolutionary Coast Guard: relax. Your jobs are safe. He is just the mayor of New York.
His jurisdiction includes schools, sanitation, policing and, on ambitious days, the subway. It also includes making sure Times Square does not permanently become three Elmos fighting Batman over a tourist’s wallet. It does not, however, include The Hague.
But Mamdani was not going to allow a small detail like constitutional authority to interfere with the launch of the Zohran Mamdani Municipal Foreign Ministry.
He had already recorded the video.
The New York City Foreign Ministry
“Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal,” Mamdani announced from the official mayoral account.
The ICC has issued an arrest warrant accusing Netanyahu of crimes. It has not convicted him of anything. Even the ICC’s own page describes Netanyahu as “allegedly responsible” for the offenses listed in the warrant. Mamdani nevertheless skipped the investigation, the trial and the minor procedural nuisance of actually proving the case.
Why burden yourself with tedious concepts like “charged” and “convicted” when you have excellent lighting and a social-media team?
Mamdani then explained that his administration had explored every possible legal method of arresting Netanyahu but had discovered that it lacked the authority.
This was presented as a major finding.
“My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law,” he said.
Every avenue. Fifth Avenue. Madison Avenue. Atlantic Avenue. Avenue of the Americas. None of them led to The Hague.
Anyone know how much municipal resources were spent investigating whether New York City could execute an international arrest warrant against a visiting foreign head of government?
He called on the federal government to join the ICC and arrest Netanyahu itself.
That’s like trying to commandeer an aircraft carrier with a MetroCard and then issuing recommendations to the Navy when it fails.
The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the ICC. Netanyahu would also be visiting New York in connection with the United Nations General Assembly, where international representatives operate under an entire architecture of federal treaties, diplomatic arrangements and privileges that were not drafted by the New York City Council between discussions about bike lanes.
I am not going to pretend international immunity law can be settled in a Substack paragraph. Fortunately, neither can the mayor of New York.
Mamdani stepped onto the stage, selected “Imagine” by John Lennon and attempted to conduct an international arrest using the NYPD.
Having discovered that he could not arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani declared him “not welcome in New York City.”
This, too, is an interesting use of municipal authority.
New York hosts the headquarters of the United Nations.
The city does not get to sort visiting dignitaries into “welcome” and “unwelcome” categories like a Williamsburg café reviewing applications for a poetry night.
No one asked Mamdani to welcome Netanyahu. No one asked him to prepare the guest room. No one asked him to leave a little chocolate on Netanyahu’s pillow or arrange a horse-drawn carriage through Central Park.
Israel’s prime minister would be coming to address the United Nations, something leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have done without issue for years.
Yet this is Mamdani’s preferred mode of politics: seize a subject over which his office has little or no authority, announce the most inflammatory position available, and then market his powerlessness as moral courage.
It is remarkably efficient.
You receive all the applause of doing something without the inconvenience of doing it.
His administration could not arrest Netanyahu, enforce the ICC warrant, determine American membership in the ICC or dictate federal foreign policy.
It could, however, produce a video. And produce a video it did.
Somewhere in New York City, a pothole watched it and realized it was going to be there for another winter.
Mamdani says he supports arresting “anyone else charged by the ICC.”
That sounds very principled.
It also raises questions.
Will the Department of Sanitation receive an international fugitive unit? I hope so. The uniforms alone would justify it.
Will alternate-side parking signs be amended?
NO PARKING
TUESDAY 8–11 A.M.
EXCEPT ICC DEFENDANTS
Does every visiting official receive a review from the mayor’s new Office of Selective Extraterritorial Jurisprudence, or is this service available exclusively for Israelis?
Because Mamdani’s interest in international justice appears unusually concentrated.
New York elected a municipal executive and received a freshman seminar on anti-Zionist international law.
Perhaps tomorrow he will announce New York City’s official position on maritime boundaries in the South China Sea.
Perhaps Staten Island will impose sanctions on Venezuela.
Perhaps the Bronx will withdraw from NATO.
Queens has yet to comment.
Then Came Tisha B’Av
Less than one day after declaring the Israeli prime minister a fugitive war criminal who was unwelcome in New York, Mamdani wished the city’s Jews a peaceful Tisha B’Av.
“I wish a peaceful Tisha B’Av to the Jewish residents of New York in the five boroughs,” he wrote. “From tonight’s sunset until tomorrow, mourners will pause and reflect on the history and resilience of the Jewish people.”
The history.
Which history, Zohran?
Resilience against what?
A difficult quarter at Goldman Sachs?
A bagel shortage?
An unfortunate run of Broadway reviews?
Tisha B’Av mourns the destruction of the First and Second Jewish Temples in Jerusalem and the exile and persecution that followed.
Jerusalem.
The city Jews faced while praying throughout centuries of exile.
The city named throughout Jewish scripture, liturgy and ritual.
The city from which Jews were expelled and to which Jews repeatedly returned.
The city at the center of the national memory that Mamdani’s political movement spends the remaining 364 days of the year treating as a suspiciously recent Zionist invention.
And now Mayor Mamdani would like to wish us a meaningful fast commemorating our expulsion from somewhere he apparently cannot name.
It is the political equivalent of wishing Christians a Merry Christmas while carefully avoiding any reference to the guy it’s named after.
Happy Tisha B’Av, Jews.
Sorry about whatever happened at that building in that place.
The omission was not subtle.
Mamdani praised Jewish “history and resilience” while avoiding the subject that gives the day meaning.
This is standard progressive Jewish-holiday language.
Mention the food.
Mention reflection.
Mention resilience.
Mention community.
Under no circumstances mention why the Jews are fasting.
Passover becomes a celebration of freedom with no Jewish escape from Egypt.
Hanukkah becomes a festival of light with no Jewish revolt against foreign religious persecution in Judea.
Tisha B’Av becomes a wellness retreat concerning generalized sadness.
The Jewish people are permitted to have traditions so long as nobody investigates where those traditions occurred.
Our holidays may be acknowledged.
Our history must remain sealed.
Our resilience is admirable.
The civilization that required that resilience is apparently controversial.
Mamdani wants a Judaism without Jerusalem, a Jewish people without peoplehood and Jewish resilience without the repeated attempts to separate Jews from their homeland.
Tisha B’Av is one enormous historical receipt. Temple. Jerusalem. Destruction. Exile. Return. Apparently the mayor read everything except the item description.
You do not have to support every policy of the modern Israeli government to understand this.
You merely have to possess a calendar.
Congratulations on Acknowledging Jewish Indigeneity
So thank you, Mayor Mamdani.
We accept your recognition.
By commemorating Tisha B’Av, you have acknowledged that Jews possessed Temples in Jerusalem before the invention of modern Zionism, the State of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu and whatever AIPAC conspiracy currently has the most engagement on TikTok.
You have acknowledged that Jews were expelled from Jerusalem.
You have acknowledged that Jews maintained a collective memory of that expulsion.
You have acknowledged that the Jewish connection to Jerusalem is not a colonial marketing campaign developed in a Tel Aviv coworking space in 1948.
This is tremendous progress.
At the present rate, Mamdani may discover the Book of Psalms by Rosh Hashanah.
By Sukkot, someone may tell him where the word “Zion” comes from.
By Hanukkah, he may learn why the Maccabees were fighting in Judea.
Please proceed slowly.
We do not want the mayor overwhelmed by Jewish history all at once.
There is an additional comedy here.
Because Mamdani inherited the official @NYCMayor account, older posts made during Eric Adams’s administration now appear beneath Mamdani’s name and photograph.
That includes a 2024 Tisha B’Av message explicitly referring to “the destruction of the temples in Jerusalem.”
For one glorious moment, it appeared that Zohran Mamdani had recognized Jerusalem, Jewish indigeneity and the Temples.
It was Eric Adams.
The Zionist entity had briefly seized control of his posting history.
The Mossad categorically denies altering the account, although we congratulate former agent Eric Adams on completing the operation two years before Mamdani took office.
Give our regards to Emperor Titus.
The legal failure was never the problem. The failure was the product.
Netanyahu was the target, but New York’s Jewish community was part of the audience.
Mamdani wanted his political base to see him identify the Jewish state’s elected leader as a criminal, declare him unwelcome and demand his arrest.
The fact that Mamdani had no power to accomplish this was not an obstacle.
It was perfect.
He gets all the pleasure of the accusation and none of the responsibility for what happens next.
Then, having delivered the hostility, he could issue a warm holiday greeting to the Jews.
“We respect your resilience.
We celebrate your traditions.
We stand against antisemitism.
We simply oppose your history, your national identity, your homeland, your security doctrine, your government, your soldiers and the overwhelming majority of you who consider yourselves Zionists.
Have an easy fast.”
Thank you.
Please stop helping.
A Statement From the Mossad
We have reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether the Mossad can prevent Zohran Mamdani from making pompous videos about subjects outside his jurisdiction.
It is clear that we do not possess the independent legal authority to do so.
We do, however, possess an X account.
Therefore, until Mamdani leaves office, loses an election, discovers municipal governance or is buried beneath an avalanche of uncollected socialist recycling, we will continue examining every tool available to defend the humanity and dignity of jokes.
Every declaration of New York City foreign policy will be forwarded to the relevant authority, which in most cases will be nobody.
This is not harassment.
It is constituent services.
Mayor Mamdani wanted to make Israel part of his municipal brand.
We intend to assist.
He will discover that Jewish history is considerably older than his social-media strategy, Jerusalem cannot be removed from Judaism with careful copywriting, and fake Mossad accounts possess almost exactly as much authority over international law as the mayor of New York City.
Unlike Mamdani, however, we know we are joking.
Fantastic article and funny, as usual. The best satire available . Mamdani is a typical conman. Not as smart as he wants to think he is, contradicting himself, and lying so much he can no longer keep track , the reason that eventually, conmen get caught or fail spectacularly.
The problem is the damage they do as their show goes on.
May he get caught soon. And I mean, literally caught. Preferably, denaturalized and sent back to Uganda.
The chutzpah of this islamist communist platinum spooned ignoramus who sits in his first real job awarded to him due to false promises of free everything suffers from not reading his job description! The ignoramus was just getting caught setting up a meeting with the IRAN UN REP., which is also against the law! One must not be fooled where his interests and goals are focused! He told the world his main purpose for entering politics! The Free everything for everyone was his Trojan Horse to be at the top of the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel!! Of course he never took into account that real estate taxes are the main source of tax revenue for the city, and that loud sucking sound are people fleeing to Texas and Florida!! The Dems should think again if they think he should be the new poster child for their party!!