Netanyahu Targets New York Mayor Mamdani in UN Speech to Mobilize Voters at Home

The useful part

Overall, Netanyahu seems to have devoted more time in his nearly 40-minute speech to singling out Mamdani than any other political leader, including Israel's traditional enemies. That makes Mamdani a useful foil for the Israeli prime minister, who is in the midst of one of the toughest re-election campaigns of his career. Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival, with his rightwing governing coalition at risk of losing Israel's parliamentary elections next month.

How it works

• Netanyahu posted an video on his personal X account that showed Mamdani celebrating at the prospect of Netanyahu's defeat in the upcoming elections.
• The video goes on to show Netanyahu defeating his political opponents in Israel – forcing Mamdani and the others to cancel their celebration.
• Netanyahu, who is often described as "the great survivor" of Israeli politics, has decades of experience demonizing his opponents and focusing Israelis on external enemies.
• Netanyahu's UN speech wasn't the first time he has targeted Mamdani – largely to curry favor with a domestic Israeli audience that views the young Muslim, pro-Palestinian mayor of New York as a villain.
• Israel's Likud party has been whipping up an election frenzy against Mamdani since the summer, when it plastered his photo on a campaign billboard in central Tel Aviv.

What to take from it

The fake video also features Khamenei and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, reveling at the prospect of Netanyahu's downfall. "They want Netanyahu to lose," says the poster, which features the logo of the rightwing Likud party that Netanyahu has dominated for decades. "Erdoğan, bro, are you coming to the party of the fall of Netanyahu elections?" an AI version of Mamdani asks in a supposed phone call with the Turkish leader.

Example or evidence

• Mamdani called the Israeli prime minister a "war criminal" and "the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people", and he urged the federal government to arrest Netanyahu on his next...
• Trump has threatened to impose crippling sanctions against the international criminal court to pressure it to revoke the warrant against his friend and ally Netanyahu.
• In July, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, pledged to lead an American campaign to dismantle the ICC "brick by brick, if necessary".
• Mamdani's effort, even if it has failed so far, offers fleeting hope that justice could prevail – and Israel's leaders will one day be held to account for their war crimes.

Details worth keeping

He singled out the leaders of Hamas, Iran, Qatar and Turkey, among others. On the surface, it might seem that Netanyahu's attacks were mainly motivated by personal animosity toward Mamdani, who pledged during last year's mayoral campaign to execute an arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued by the international criminal court (ICC) in 2024. Since October 2023, Netanyahu has prolonged Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, and a wider regional war, so he could avoid early elections and block an independent commission into his government's security failures that led up to the Hamas attack.