Or is his latest political stunt all about Israel for some reason.
This week, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal, pronounced him unwelcome in New York and openly explored whether the NYPD could arrest him during a visit to the United Nations.
City lawyers eventually informed the mayor that New York possesses no such authority and Mamdani was forced to admit as much in a statement to his disappointed supporters.
The United States does not enforce International Criminal Court warrants, and a municipal police department cannot improvise its own foreign policy. Mamdani nevertheless called on Washington to join the ICC and arrest Netanyahu instead.
This raises a larger question: Why is so much of the activist left’s attention focused on Israel?
There are wars, dictatorships and humanitarian disasters across the world. China has carried out a systematic campaign of imprisonment, forced labor and cultural destruction against Uyghur Muslims. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and has an ICC warrant of his own. Sudan has descended into mass killing and famine. Iran murders protesters, persecutes women and finances terrorist organizations across the Middle East.
Yet none of these causes appears to consume Western progressive politics quite like Israel.
School boards that cannot ensure students can read suddenly feel qualified to adjudicate ancient territorial disputes. City councils pass Gaza resolutions while residents worry about rent, crime and failing public services. A mayor elected to govern New York behaves as though voters placed him in charge of an international tribunal.
The explanation cannot simply be compassion for civilians. Palestinian suffering is real and deserves attention. But genuine humanitarian concern would also recognize that Palestinians have suffered under Hamas, an authoritarian terrorist organization that embeds military operations in civilian communities, suppresses political opposition and began the current war with the October 7 massacre.
That massacre is, as always, curiously absent from Mamdani’s recent indictment of Netanyahu.
On October 7, Hamas-led attackers murdered Israeli civilians, abducted hostages and committed mass, organized sexual violence (and publicized livestream on social media even as internet moderators worked furiously to take down the videos and photos).
A United Nations investigation found reasonable grounds to believe that unspeakable acts of rape and gang rape occurred during the attack and found credible evidence of sexual violence against hostages.
These were not allegations the progressive movement had to uncover in a hostile information environment. The perpetrators recorded and celebrated much of their violence themselves.
Yet many activists who insist that every Palestinian casualty must be placed personally at Netanyahu’s feet have shown remarkably little interest in holding Hamas responsible for anything. October 7 is minimized, rationalized or treated as an irrelevant historical footnote. Hamas’s use of Palestinian civilians is dismissed as an Israeli talking point. The hostages disappear from the story.
Why?
The Chinese Communist Party is carrying out acts of genocide against Uyghur Muslims living in China, a fact for which these is ample evidence including but not limited to forcible organ harvesting.
Because Israel fits an ideological narrative that China, Iran and Hamas do not.
Israel can be portrayed as Western, powerful and “colonial.” Palestinians can be presented exclusively as powerless victims. Once those roles are assigned, facts that complicate the arrangement become inconvenient. Hamas’s religious extremism, Iranian sponsorship and brutality toward Palestinians interfere with the preferred morality play.
The focus on Israel also allows activists to challenge an American ally while risking very little. Israel is an open democracy with a free press, opposition parties and public demonstrations. Its policies can be examined in minute detail. China imprisons critics. Iran shoots them. Hamas reportedly tortures them.
Paradoxically, democratic openness makes Israel easier to attack than the dictatorships surrounding it.
There is also an unmistakable political incentive. Condemning Netanyahu signals membership in the progressive coalition. It tells activists that a politician recognizes their preferred villains and shares their vocabulary. Mamdani’s arrest promise was ideal for that purpose: dramatic, emotionally satisfying and legally impossible.
Its value was never practical. Netanyahu was not going to be arrested by the NYPD. The promise demonstrated ideological allegiance.
That is why the phrase “Free Palestine” deserves a serious response.
Yes, let’s do: Free Palestinians from Hamas.
Free them from Iranian exploitation and from leaders who sacrifice Palestinian lives in pursuit of an endless war. Free them from corrupt and authoritarian institutions that have repeatedly failed to build competent government. Free Israelis from terrorism. Then pursue a political settlement in which neither people must disappear for the other to be free.
Criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic. Support for Palestinian statehood is not antisemitic. But a movement becomes deeply suspect when it singles out the world’s only Jewish-majority nation for uniquely obsessive condemnation, excuses violence against its civilians and treats Jewish self-determination as the one national aspiration the world must dismantle.
Mamdani is the mayor of New York, not the prosecutor at The Hague. His responsibilities include public safety, housing, sanitation, schools and a strained city budget.
Before anyone promises to free Palestine, perhaps they should explain whether they intend to then free Palestinians from Hamas — and perhaps why Israel commands so much attention.
(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)