The ambassador also denounced Emmanuel Macron for an outlandish claim about Hamas that the French president made in his UN speech
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) should be arrested for supporting Hamas, inciting antisemitic mobs against Jews, and attempting to hobnob with Iranian officials stationed at the United Nations, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations told the Washington Free Beacon in an exclusive interview.
Mamdani, Israeli ambassador Danny Danon said pointedly, “incites against the Jewish community. He supported Hamas terrorists. He sent his top officials to meet with the Iranian delegation at the U.N.” The meeting Danon referenced was slated to occur in July between Mamdani’s commissioner for international affairs, Ana María Archila, and Iran’s permanent U.N. representative but was aborted after the U.S. State Department intervened.
“If someone should be arrested, [Mamdani] should be arrested, not the Prime Minister of Israel,” Danon said, referring to Mamdani’s widely covered campaign pledge to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he steps foot in New York City. The mayor walked back his promise in the Gracie Mansion version of an Oval Office address, blaming the lawyers, but said Netanyahu was unwelcome in the city.
Danon’s remarks reflect the tensions between Mamdani and the Israeli government as Netanyahu makes his way to New York City for a speech before the United Nations on Thursday. Tensions between the sides were already running high after Netanyahu posted a Tuesday video on X threatening to expose Mamdani during his U.N. speech.
“I’m coming to the U.N. I’m going to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers, and I’m going to tell the truth about you,” Netanyahu said in a post that echoed Danon’s own harsh remarks to the Free Beacon. The Israeli leader also accused Mamdani of backing “the Hamas terrorist monsters who butchered our people.”
Both Danon’s and Netanyahu’s comments were largely in response to a cozy interview Mamdani gave to fiercely anti-Israel CNN personality Christiane Amanpour. In that exchange, Mamdani again labeled Netanyahu a “war criminal” and accused him of overseeing a “genocide” in Gaza.
“When it comes to Benjamin Netanyahu, I have described him as I believe him to be—a war criminal and an architect of a horrific genocide of the Palestinian people,” Mamdani said, adding that the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu should be honored.
“If the International Criminal Court deems someone worthy of an arrest because of a violation of those laws, then who are we to say that anyone should be above that? And I think very clearly that everyone should be held accountable to it,” the mayor said.
The Trump administration has placed sanctions on ICC judges and prosecutors and was reported this week to be preparing broader sanctions against the court itself, which Trump denounced in his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday.
Danon, meanwhile, told the Free Beacon that the rampant antisemitism spreading across Mamdani’s New York City is on full display inside the United Nations’ Turtle Bay headquarters.
“We feel it every day at the U.N.,” Danon said. “It’s within the heart of the U.N. It’s in the streets of the U.S., Europe, all over the world, and we cannot ignore that.”
Danon said that while the United Nations has always been a bastion of anti-Israel fervor, “now it’s mainstream, it’s public, and it’s at the highest level we’ve ever seen.”
The Israeli ambassador also took aim at French president Emmanuel Macron, who used his own U.N. address this week to claim that Hamas does not operate in the West Bank, a statement dismissed as ridiculous by Middle East observers.
“Look at what is happening in the West Bank, where day after day we see violations. And in the name of what? Hamas has never been particularly active in the West Bank,” Macron said in comments that his embassy later attempted to claim were mistranslated.
Open source intelligence analysts estimate Hamas has orchestrated around 150 terror attacks in the West Bank.
Danon called Macron “delusional” and said “he ignores the reality” that Hamas operates inside the West Bank, as well as Gaza.
Asked about President Donald Trump’s Monday vow to either ink a permanent ceasefire with Iran or “drive them into hell with no chance of survival,” Danon said it is unlikely Tehran will enter into an agreement that is acceptable to both Israel and the United States.
“The feeling I get from the Iranians, they feel like they won the war, which is ridiculous because they lost the war,” Danon said. “But I think mentally, they still feel superior and are very arrogant and that is a challenge. You cannot get a reasonable agreement when they feel that they won the war.”
Danon also dismissed breathless reports in the Western media that there is increasing tension between the Israeli government and Trump administration over the Gaza peace plan and next steps in the Iran war.
“We have a strong bond,” Danon said. “It doesn’t mean we agree about everything all the time, but we have an open discussion. No surprises, no daylight between Washington and Jerusalem.”
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