Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel posted an A.I.-produced campaign video on Friday that imagines Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s mayor, making common cause with Iran’s supreme leader and others over Israel’s upcoming election.
“Erdogan, bro, are you coming to the party of the fall of Netanyahu’s elections?” a computer-animated version of Mr. Mamdani asks in a phone call with an avatar of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the video, posted to Mr. Netanyahu’s personal X profile. The images are labeled as A.I.-generated.
The video then shows avatars of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the Iranian leader, and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, joining the fictional conversation rejoicing at the prospect that voters will topple Mr. Netanyahu.
Mr. Mamdani’s office declined to comment on the video.
The enmity between the first Muslim mayor of America’s largest city and the longest-serving prime minister of Israel has only intensified in recent weeks. The video offered the latest example of how each leader has made opposition to the other part of their political profile, despite their very different jobs and the thousands of miles between them.
Mr. Netanyahu, who is facing a tough re-election in October and is trailing in the Israeli opinion polls, has accused Mr. Mamdani of “fomenting hate,” and appealed to Israeli national security in criticizing the mayor, partly by including him among Israel’s enemies.
Likud party billboards have plastered Mr. Mamdani’s face alongside the leaders of Iran and Hezbollah, the militant group in Lebanon that Israel has been fighting for decades. The video Mr. Netanyahu posted on Friday ends with him as the election victor, and Israel’s foes calling off the party.
“They want Netanyahu to fall. Don’t let them win,” a narrator says in Hebrew.
Mr. Mamdani, a vocal critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, told The New York Times in July that he was looking into whether he could arrest Mr. Netanyahu when he visits the United Nations in September, and he has called the Israeli leader a “war criminal.”
The mayor later acknowledged that he did not have the authority to make good on an arrest, a campaign pledge, but he has urged the federal government to do so.
The International Criminal Court in 2024 issued an arrest warrant for him on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, where more than 70,000 people have been killed in a war sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel. The warrant also sought the arrest of three Hamas leaders, who have all been killed, and a former Israeli defense minister.
But there appears to be no chance of federal law enforcement arresting Mr. Netanyahu, who denies those charges, in the near future. The United States has never joined the court or recognized its authority.
President Trump has said that the Israeli leader, whose country is a longtime American ally, would not be arrested in the United States “in any way, shape, or form.”
Mr. Netanyahu said he still planned to travel to New York City in September for the United Nations General Assembly meeting. Last year, representatives from dozens of countries walked out of the General Assembly just before Mr. Netanyahu gave a defiant speech rejecting the creation of a Palestinian state.
Jonathan Rosen contributed reporting.
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