Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor of New York last year vowing to carry out an international arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, the next time Mr. Netanyahu visited the city.
But when the Israeli leader addresses the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan on Thursday, with protesters expected to fill the streets to oppose him and Israel’s war in Gaza, the mayor will not be there to make good on his promise. He plans to be with the prime minister of the Netherlands, visiting an L.G.B.T.Q. center.
Mr. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has made advocacy for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel’s government central to his political identity, and he has repeatedly called Mr. Netanyahu a war criminal. The mayor’s backing away from his promise to have Mr. Netanyahu arrested — which he conceded in July is outside the city’s legal authority — and his decision not to appear at any protests reflected an apparent shift in his approach to an issue that remains deeply important to many New Yorkers.
Ruth Messinger, an ally of Mr. Mamdani’s who has served as Manhattan borough president and as the president and chief executive of the American Jewish World Service, acknowledged that the mayor had been speaking less about Israel recently.
“I think the mayor has made his feelings on Mideast issues clear,” Ms. Messinger said
, adding that the mayor “doesn’t need to stir up enmity in and among New Yorkers on issues that may be really important to him, but are not central to the governing of New York City.”
City Hall aides would not share any details about the mayor’s thought process regarding his response to Mr. Netanyahu’s presence in New York. But allies and confidants of the mayor, as well as some who disapprove of his focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said the change became clear after he released a video in July in which he acknowledged that the city could not arrest Mr. Netanyahu.
In the video, he again called the prime minister a war criminal and the architect of a genocide in Gaza and urged the federal government to arrest him.
Mr. Netanyahu was accused of war crimes in 2024 by the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for his arrest. He has denied the charges.
Some progressive Jewish groups praised the video, which has so far been viewed more than 103 million times. But it broadly worsened the mayor’s already poor relationship with the leaders of the city’s largest Jewish organizations, who believe that Mr. Mamdani’s criticism of Israel has inflamed growing antisemitism.
The relationship between Mr. Mamdani and those groups reached a low point a few days later with the stabbing of a visibly Jewish man and an Asian man on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Some Jewish leaders accused the mayor of bearing some responsibility.
The mayor and his supporters have vigorously rejected that claim. But the events helped catalyze a meeting convened by the mayor’s office in August, where a group of Jewish leaders urged Mr. Mamdani to soften his rhetoric about Israel and pay greater attention to the effect it could have on Jewish New Yorkers’ safety.
New York City mayors typically do not attend protests, which can be unpredictable and unruly.
But when he admitted that the city could not arrest Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Mamdani all but encouraged protests against the prime minister, prompting questions about whether he might make an appearance at any of the demonstrations.
Some of Mr. Mamdani’s progressive critics, including the Palestinian American protest leader Nerdeen Kiswani, have questioned his approach to the issue.
“Mamdani ran on arresting Netanyahu,” said Ms. Kiswani, the co-founder of the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime. “If Mamdani believes that he is responsible for genocide and should be arrested, I don’t understand sitting out the protests when he comes to our city.”
But Ms. Kiswani said it would be “a mistake” to treat the controversy over the Israeli prime minister’s visit as “a personality dispute between Mamdani and Netanyahu” when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is bigger than any one man.
Others criticized the mayor for not joining demonstrations against antisemitism that are taking place around the city this week to coincide with the General Assembly.
“Mayor Mamdani should be standing with us,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism. “Instead, his demonizing language about Israel hasn’t stopped. The Jewish community needs leaders who will make our safety a priority.”
Even though the mayor will not participate in protests, he and Mr. Netanyahu have traded public barbs this week.
In a CNN interview clip posted online Monday night, Mr. Mamdani called again for Mr. Netanyahu’s arrest and reiterated his belief that the prime minister is a war criminal. The remarks were the mayor’s strongest commentary on Israel in recent weeks.
The next day, Mr. Netanyahu released a video of his own, falsely accusing Mr. Mamdani of supporting Hamas and inciting anti-Jewish riots in New York and vowing to “tell the truth” about the mayor during his speech at the United Nations on Thursday.
Asked about Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks at an unrelated news conference on Tuesday morning, Mr. Mamdani said, “We all know that what the prime minister has said in that video is not true.”
Mr. Mamdani has condemned Hamas as a terrorist organization and described the attacks it led against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as “a horrific war crime.” But the day after the attacks, when he was a state lawmaker, Mr. Mamdani condemned “Netanyahu’s declaration of war” in Gaza, and immediately called for Israel to take steps toward achieving peace in the region.
The mayor has also faced criticism for describing Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza as genocide. That claim has also been made by a United Nations commission as well as international and Israeli human rights groups. It has nevertheless outraged many pro-Israel Jewish leaders, who believe the mayor’s rhetoric on the matter is divisive and one-sided.
The last time Mr. Netanyahu visited the United Nations, Mr. Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, a staunch supporter of Israel, attended the prime minister’s speech and praised him. Mr. Mamdani, then the Democratic nominee for mayor, sharply rebuked Mr. Adams for greeting Mr. Netanyahu “as a friend.”
Mr. Mamdani has met this week with several other world leaders, including the presidents of Brazil, Spain, Austria and the European Council, as well as the prime ministers of Barbados, Norway and Ireland.
Brad Lander, an ally of Mr. Mamdani’s and the Democratic congressional nominee in a Brooklyn and Manhattan district, said he planned to protest against Mr. Netanyahu alongside progressive Jewish groups “because we don’t want war criminals in our city.” But he said the mayor’s decision not to join the demonstrations was the right one.
“For the week of the U.N. General Assembly, New York City has an extremely important role to play,” Mr. Lander said, “and the first job of the mayor — or any mayor — is to make sure the city can play that role.”
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