Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party has plastered Tel Aviv with a campaign poster that puts New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in the same frame as Iran's newly installed Supreme Leader, Turkey's president, and Hezbollah's chief, branding them collectively as threats to Israel ahead of the country's October election. Netanyahu himself reposted the image, which shows the four men against a black background beneath a message urging voters not to let Netanyahu's enemies win.
The billboard groups Mamdani with Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father Ali Khamenei as Iran's Supreme Leader in March 2026 following U.S. and Israeli military strikes, according to background reporting cited by Arab News. Also pictured are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem, placing an elected American mayor alongside heads of state and leaders of entities actively engaged in military conflict with Israel. As The Independent reports, the campaign advert is meant to promote Netanyahu in the forthcoming Israeli elections, which are set for October 27, 2026 and will mark the first nationwide test of his coalition since the October 7, 2023 attacks.
Mamdani's Arrest Calls Fulfill a Campaign Promise
Mamdani's inclusion traces back to his own public statements about Netanyahu, whom the International Criminal Court accused of crimes against humanity including murder, persecution and other inhumane acts, tied to the war in Gaza. The mayor has called Netanyahu a war criminal charged by the ICC and said he belongs in the Hague, per the same Independent report. The ICC issued its arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November 2024, and the court's 124 member states are obliged to arrest him if he enters their territory.
Netanyahu denies the allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity and has called them antisemitic. He also branded Mamdani's words hate speech, escalating a war of rhetoric that has followed the mayor since before he took office. Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, went further in July, accusing Mamdani of antisemitism and supporting Hamas, and separately telling reporters that the mayor's arrest threats amounted to political theater without legal foundation aimed at exciting his political base, according to SBS News.
Why New York City Can't Actually Make an Arrest
Mamdani looked into means to arrest Netanyahu after taking office, but city attorneys eventually confirmed what federal law had already made clear. Following an administration legal review, Mamdani acknowledged that New York City lacks independent authority to enforce ICC warrants and redirected his demand to federal officials, calling on the U.S. federal government to take action, as reported by The Guardian.
The jurisdictional wall Mamdani ran into is a legal one, not a political one. Under the federal American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002, U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies and courts are legally prohibited from assisting the International Criminal Court, including executing arrest warrants or extraditing individuals to the Hague, per background compiled from Stanford Law School's analysis of the statute. Layered on top of that, the 1947 United Nations Headquarters Agreement legally binds U.S. authorities not to impede transit for foreign officials attending meetings at UN headquarters in Manhattan, while barring local police from entering UN grounds without the consent of the UN Secretary-General, according to JURIST.
Washington Has Already Ruled It Out
President Donald Trump has said Netanyahu will not be arrested while in the United States, a position that lines up with the executive branch's broader posture toward the ICC. In June 2025, the U.S. Department of State imposed financial sanctions on four International Criminal Court judges under Executive Order 14203 for investigating and seeking warrants against officials from non-ICC member nations like Israel, according to background documented on Wikipedia. Netanyahu made his eighth state visit of Trump's second term to the United States in July 2026, per the same Independent report.
Mamdani's clarification that the arrest matter falls outside his jurisdiction echoes a similar episode from Dearborn, Michigan, where Mayor Abdullah Hammoud announced in November 2024 that his local police would arrest Netanyahu if he entered city boundaries, as Hoodline previously reported. Both cases illustrate how municipal declarations against foreign leaders repeatedly collide with federal foreign policy and international treaty obligations that supersede local authority.
An Election-Season Flashpoint With New York Ties
Netanyahu's campaign is leveraging Mamdani and other foreign critics to rally conservative voters as Likud, which joined forces with the far-right religious parties of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich in 2022, heads into its first nationwide vote since Israel's 2022 elections were suspended and postponed after the October 7, 2023 attacks. Israeli opposition politicians have already responded with parody versions of the poster, including one invoking the Qatargate corruption controversy tied to figures associated with Netanyahu, according to Ground News.
The controversy also lands amid ongoing local debate in New York over Mamdani's Middle East positions. In December 2025, local religious leaders and human rights analysts publicly debated Mayor-elect Mamdani's stances on Israel and the BDS movement, even as polling showed he had won roughly one-third of New York City's Jewish vote, per Hoodline's earlier coverage. With Netanyahu's arrest still legally out of reach for city officials, and the Israeli election just weeks away, the mayor's foreign policy declarations look set to remain a flashpoint in both New York and Israel through the fall.
