Netanyahu Fires Back at Mamdani’s Threat to Have Him Arrested — Accuses NYC Mayor of ‘Fomenting Hate’ in Fiery Fox News Interview

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for threatening to have him arrested and accused him of “fomenting hate.”

In a fiery interview on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures, the prime minister bashed Mamdani — and seemed to link his rhetoric to the stabbing of a Jewish man outside the Jewish Center in Manhattan on Thursday.

“Look at what he’s doing,” Netanyahu said of Mamdani. “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. And he’s foisting hate and fear. I speak to Jewish Americans in New York and they’re afraid right now. And 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… I think, and with a cry of ‘Allahu Akbar’ And you know what that means.”

He added, “I think that it’s shameful. This thing is very bad for New York. I think it’s very bad for peace.”

On Wednesday, Mamdani said of Netanyahu, “we are talking about someone who has been charged with crimes against humanity, someone who has visited this city on many in an occasion and has been welcomed by previous mayors. I want to make it very clear that that welcome ends with me. I will not welcome Benjamin Netanyahu or any other war criminals when they come to this city.” Earlier in the week, he threatened to act on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court have Netanyahu arrested for war crimes — though the mayor later acknowledged he could not legally do so. Mamdani has called Netanyahu, “the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people.”

Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo pressed Netanyahu about Mamdani’s rhetoric.

“I’m wondering if you believe that this rhetoric is making Jewish New Yorkers unsafe, and is that what’s behind so much upset and this anti-Israel sentiment raging across contrary,” Bartiromo said.

“I do think that Jews feel very uncomfortable,” Netanyahu said. “Because I speak to quite a lot of my friends and they say, look, it’s like a different world. We’re afraid to go into the streets. We certainly do not want to wear yarmulkes or any clothing that would give away that we’re Jews. But yes, they feel frightened. I think that’s part of this incitement language that is sweeping a lot circles with anti-Semitism, a lot of circles in the West, in the United States. And unbelievably in New York City, which has the second-largest Jewish population in the world after Israel. And I think it’s wrong.”

Netanyahu went on to accuse Mamdani of “aligning himself with the criminals, with these murderers” who perpetrated the Oct. 7 attacks.

Watch above, via Fox News.

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