Table Stakes - July 27th

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I’m Atlas, and welcome to Table Stakes!

Here’s a look at today’s topics:

• Israeli P.M. Slams Accusations & Arrest Threat By NYC Mayor

• UN Chief Calls For Public Support Of Syria In Damascus Visit

• Romania Downs 3rd Drone In 3 Days As Tensions Rise With Russia

Israeli P.M. Slams Accusations & Arrest Threat By NYC Mayor

_{By: Atlas}

Benjamin Netanyahu used a Sunday television appearance to hit back at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, accusing him of "fomenting hate" and stoking fear among Jewish New Yorkers, and vowing to address the United Nations General Assembly in the city this fall despite the mayor's declaration that he is not welcome. The exchange marked the sharpest escalation yet in a running feud between the Israeli prime minister and the newly elected mayor.

The clash traces to Mamdani's long-stated intention to see Netanyahu arrested on an International Criminal Court warrant. Last week the mayor conceded the city has no legal power to do so, but he still branded Netanyahu a war criminal unwelcome in New York and urged the federal government to act. Netanyahu, appearing on Fox News, answered that he was "not concerned" and turned the accusation back on the mayor.

The Prime Minister's Charges

"He's fomenting hate. He's supposed to be the mayor of all New Yorkers, Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone, but he's trying to turn one group against the other," Netanyahu said on "Sunday Morning Futures." He said Jewish friends in New York had told him they were afraid to wear yarmulkes or clothing that would identify them as Jewish, describing a climate in which "we're afraid to go into the streets."

He tied that fear to a specific incident, a pair of stabbings in New York on Thursday in which a suspect wounded a Jewish man and an Asian man blocks apart, allegedly shouting "Allahu akbar." Both men survived, and the suspect was charged with hate crimes. "I don't think it's accidental that after he made this hate speech against Israel and against me, the next day a Jew is stabbed coming out of a synagogue," Netanyahu said.

He went further, asserting that Mamdani had "celebrated" the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, and that leading Democrats had privately told him they joined what he called the party's "radical fringe" out of fear their families would be harassed. He offered no evidence for either claim. Mamdani has repeatedly described the October 7 attack as "a horrific war crime." His wife, the artist Rama Duwaji, drew scrutiny for social media activity around that date and apologized in April for past posts she said used harmful language.

Mamdani's Position

The mayor had laid out his stance in a video the previous week, after being pressed in a New York Times interview on a campaign pledge to have police arrest Netanyahu. "It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant," Mamdani said, calling on the federal government to join the ICC and execute it. "I want to be equally clear, Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large."

He told New Yorkers he understood their frustration and that the city would "always respect" expressions of protest, and he has urged supporters to demonstrate when Netanyahu arrives. His office did not respond to requests for comment on Netanyahu's Sunday remarks.

Legal experts have said Mamdani never had the authority he once claimed. The United States is not a member of the ICC, a 2002 law bars extraditing anyone to the court, and sitting heads of government and U.N. representatives generally hold immunity while traveling to and from U.N. meetings. President Trump, for his part, posted last week that Netanyahu "will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America."

The ICC and the War

The Hague-based court issued warrants in November 2024 for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, alleging crimes against humanity and the use of "starvation as a method of warfare" in Gaza. Israel rejects the court's jurisdiction and denies committing war crimes. Netanyahu called the charges "bogus" on Sunday and pointed to the ICC's removal Friday of its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, over sexual misconduct allegations, casting it as proof the case against him was a fabrication. "He pulled a con job on the international community with these bogus charges," Netanyahu said. Khan has denied the allegations.

The war that produced the warrants began with the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, which killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel and took about 250 hostages. Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the U.N. considers broadly reliable, says more than 73,000 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive since, roughly half of them women and children. Some of the most graphic early claims about October 7 that Netanyahu repeated Sunday, including that babies were beheaded, have been disputed and in some cases debunked.

A Shifting Political Backdrop

The confrontation unfolds against a measurable shift in American opinion, one that complicates Netanyahu's framing. He warned that once-bipartisan U.S. support for Israel is at risk as the party's left aligns with Mamdani, and cautioned against rising antisemitism. But polling suggests his claims about the mayor's standing among Jews do not hold up cleanly. A June AP-NORC survey of more than 1,000 Jewish adults found 44 percent viewed Mamdani favorably and 39 percent unfavorably, while only about a third viewed Netanyahu favorably against roughly six in ten unfavorably. A YouGov poll this week found 46 percent of Americans believed Netanyahu should be arrested, against 28 percent who did not.

The calls for arrest have also spread beyond Mamdani. Representative Ro Khanna of California said last week that the U.S. should cooperate with the ICC and arrest Netanyahu or Russia's Vladimir Putin if either entered American jurisdiction, framing it as "a matter of a rules-based international order." The Trump administration has rejected that view, noting the U.S. never ratified the treaty creating the court. Netanyahu was due in Washington this week to meet Trump and attend funeral services for the late Senator Lindsey Graham, a longtime ally, before the U.N. gathering in September that is likely to bring the standoff with Mamdani to a head. "I intend to come and speak the truth," Netanyahu said, "from the podium of the United Nations."

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