Zohran Mamdani claims that New York City “must follow international law,” a sweeping declaration he deploys when threatening to arrest the prime minister of Israel or when excusing antisemitic mobs outside a Manhattan synagogue. He is wrong. And when tested, the mayor-elect’s slogan reveals his hypocrisy and antisemitism.
First, NYC need not (indeed cannot) follow the “international law” under which Mamdani would arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The mayor of a municipality has zero authority to enforce international law. Every first-year law student learns that municipalities are creatures of state law. Cities and their executives have no authority to enforce “international law” unless Congress has implemented that law and given domestic courts jurisdiction. That is Bedrock Federalism 101.
New York may enforce New York law. It may enforce federal law when federal authorities deputize it. What it may not do is pretend the United Nations charter sits above the United States Constitution. Mamdani’s threat to arrest an allied head of government is not just unserious; it is legally impossible.
Second, no international law permits an angry mob to threaten synagogue attendees at an aliyah information session. The incoming mayor’s willingness to shrug off violent intimidation outside a synagogue is merely mob politics disguised as moral posturing. He invokes “international law” with great confidence but never cites a single provision. Which article of which international treaty was supposedly breached by a synagogue hosting an aliyah information session? He can’t answer this question because there isn’t one.
Zohran Mamdani's hypocritical view of international law
At his core, Mamdani is a hypocrite. If he truly wants to enforce “international law,” he has an overflowing list of targets unrelated to the world’s only Jewish state. But he doesn’t threaten to arrest them. For example, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas could be prosecuted under Articles 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute due to the PA’s policy of “pay-for-slay,” which incentivizes terrorism and the murder of Jews. If Mamdani were consistent, Abbas would be on his arrest list. He isn’t.
Likewise, if the mayor-elect were guided by international law, he would demand the arrest of Iranian leaders for violations of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (1999) and UN Security Council Resolutions 1373 and 1540. These international laws prohibit states from supporting terrorist organizations. Yet, Iran openly finances, trains, arms, and shelters Hamas and Hezbollah, but Mamdani hasn’t sought the arrest of any Iranian leaders.
Why does NYC’s incoming mayor summon inapplicable or imagined “international law” only to threaten or delegitimize Jews? And why is he silent about real international law breaches, which in fact harm Jews?
Sadly, for Mamdani, “international law” is not a legal framework. It is a weapon applied only against Jews and Israel and abandoned the moment it requires condemning actual mass murderers, dictators, and terror financiers who harm Jews and Israel. This isn’t principle. It is prejudice dressed up in legal vocabulary. Mamdani’s misguided and biased references to international law are merely a cloak hiding his antisemitic intentions.
International law, flawed as it is, was created after the Holocaust to protect civilians, especially persecuted minorities. Using it as a cudgel against the world’s only Jewish state inverts that purpose. It turns the victims of history into the accused, while the perpetrators of real atrocities escape mention. New Yorkers, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, deserve far better from their next mayor.
The writer is a founding partner of the American law firm Ehrenstein|Sager, specializing in commercial law, complex litigation, and large-scale international arbitration.