During his campaign last year, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised that, if elected, he would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) when he arrived for the U.N. General Assembly. Now, after an “active conversation” with his legal department, Mamdani says he does not have the authority to follow through on his pledge.
With good reason: If Mamdani tried it, he would be the one going to jail, not Netanyahu.
The United States is not a party to the ICC and does not recognize its authority. To the contrary, in 2002 Congress passed the bipartisan American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, which prohibits cooperation with an arrest warrant from the rogue international court. If Mamdani had tried to arrest Netanyahu, he would have been violating 22 U.S.C. § 7423, “Prohibition on cooperation with the International Criminal Court,” which declares “no agency or entity of any State or local government … may cooperate with the International Criminal Court in response to a request for cooperation submitted by [the court].” While this is not a criminal statute, the Trump administration could have gotten an injunction from a federal judge stopping the arrest; if Mamdani had violated it, a judge could have held him in contempt and jailed him.
Mamdani could also have been prosecuted for violating 18 U.S.C. § 112, the Act for the Protection of Foreign Officials and Official Guests of the United States. This is a criminal statute and states: “Whoever assaults, strikes, wounds, imprisons, or offers violence to a foreign official, official guest, or internationally protected person” — Netanyahu is all three — “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both” (emphasis added). The law further states that whoever “uses a deadly or dangerous weapon” in violating this law — presumably any police officers Mamdani sent to arrest Netanyahu would have been armed — “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
Furthermore, this act authorizes the U.S. attorney general to “request assistance from any Federal, State, or local agency, including the Army, Navy, and Air Force” to assist in enforcing the law notwithstanding “any statute, rule, or regulation to the contrary” (such as the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of federal military personnel to execute domestic civilian laws). And the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act authorizes the president “to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person … who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.” In other words, the only one ever facing arrest here was Mamdani.
But it actually gets worse for hizzoner. He may have already broken the law by threatening to take Netanyahu into custody. The Protection of Foreign Officials and Official Guests Act states that whoever “intimidates, coerces, threatens, or harasses a foreign official or an official guest or obstructs a foreign official in the performance of his duties” or “attempts to intimidate, coerce, threaten, or harass a foreign official or an official guest or obstruct a foreign official in the performance of his duties … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.” This means that if a court found that Mamdani’s threat was intended to prevent Netanyahu from coming to New York to carry out his official duties, the mayor could face six months in prison.
It’s good that Mamdani’s legal advisers can read the U.S. Code. But the mayor’s reversal doesn’t wipe away what’s revealed by this foolish episode — something sadly unsurprising given rampant antisemitism on the left but shocking nonetheless.
Of course, Mamdani’s message Tuesday about war crimes made no mention of the mass murder, rape and abduction carried out by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, the atrocity that forced Netanyahu to go to war in Gaza in the first place. Of course, the ICC never indicted and Mamdani never threatened to arrest the leaders of regimes like Iran, which massacred tens of thousands of unarmed protesters in January; China, which is committing genocide against the Uyghurs; or North Korea, which is engaged in the extermination, murder and mass starvation of its citizens in a political prison camp system, among other regimes that attend the U.N. General Assembly each fall. The ICC targeted the leader of the world’s only Jewish state, which is defending itself against radical Islamic terrorists seeking its destruction.
This is yet another reason why Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration would disassemble the ICC. As Rubio explained, despite the fact that the U.S. never ratified the Rome Statute creating the ICC, the court claims the power to “override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states — and to prosecute and arrest our citizens.” The ICC has not only targeted Netanyahu (though Israel also does not recognize the court), it launched an investigation into what the court’s chief prosecutor described as “war crimes by members of the United States armed forces” in Afghanistan — prompting the U.S. to impose sanctions on the court’s top officials. Rubio declared that the U.S. will not tolerate an illegitimate court targeting the U.S. and allies like Israel. “We will dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary,” he says.
He’s right. The ICC has no authority to prosecute Netanyahu, and the mayor of New York has no authority to arrest him. Mayor Mamdani should be grateful his lawyers stopped him before the law did.
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