Mamdani, if Elected Mayor, Pledges to Order N.Y.P.D. to Arrest Netanyahu

An american that wants to follow international law? What doofus...

He should order every ICE agent be stopped and immediately identify themselves. Even if an agent was identified 5 minutes ago, if the mask goes up start the whole process over again

He should take a swim in a nuclear reactor and then arrange to be bitten by a Goliath beetle so that he inherits the beetle's armor, strength, and relative size, so that he is the world's only half beetle half human, 500ft tall mayor. Then he should legally change his name to the Chewnifax and go do some fucking justice.

I mean, that's cool and all, but the N.Y. Times latching on to stuff like that makes it easier for them to try to smear him as a "radical Muslim antisemite" or whatever and bury stories about his economic populism. When push comes to shove, it's the latter that working-class New Yorkers care about and that would get him elected.

I don't think he's wrong to take that position re: Netanyahu, but I think it's possibly a tactical error to let the media bait him into focusing on it instead of hammering on the economic message.

That's clearly the NYTs intent in writing this article.
Do you think New Yorkers will buy the "radical Muslim antisemite" line?
- They already haven't. They're smarter than average red state Americans.
The majority of NYC residents would like to see Netanyahu get fucked last I checked. Anti-Israel stuff is immensely popular among democrats in general.
Smear? Fuck that makes me want to vote for him more.
- Perhaps, but I think his message from the debate was better: The job is to be mayor of a city, there's no reason the office should have anything at all to do with foreign affairs so long as those affairs stay out of the city.
  Like personally I appreciate calling out the atrocity, but it isn't the job of the mayor to be neck deep in that either way.
The antisemitism accusstions no longer works we all see the genocide live
On the other hand, this has been a tactic of the right, and it’s somewhat successful: Keep showing new avenues of attack, and you put your adversaries constantly on the defensive.
What’s sad is, many voters don’t care about the merits of an issue; just the optics of power and assertion. Person X is on the defensive, criticizing a bold statement and thinking they should walk back on it, Person Y is already spouting a new message.
I think it's a tactical error to let the right-wing fascists dictate your policies before there's even a chance they get enacted.
It's a bad position to take. Not because it's the wrong thing to do. Netanyahu is undeniably a war criminal and should face justice. It's a bad position because only the federal government should be making foreign relations decisions. NYC can and should make itself a very uncomfortable place for Netanyahu but actually arresting him is something that the FBI should do. From that standpoint this isn't different from Texas putting the barriers in the Rio Grande. SCOTUS should have smacked them down hard for that because it usurps authority that the Constitution gives exclusively to the federal government. Of course, the court didn't smack Texas down on that and it was objectively wrong both constitutionally and morally so maybe the constitution and the rule of law in general don't really apply anymore.
He doesn't even need to focus on it, he just need to tangentially allude to it and suddenly a bunch of these hack rags will end up treating it like its the capstone of his policy agenda.
- All the more reason to STFU about it now, and then just do it once he's in office if the opportunity presents itself.
  Speaking of which, telegraphing that visiting NYC would be a bad idea for Netanyahu under Mamdani's leadership is also exactly the opposite of what he should do.

BALLZ

Good.

The balls on this guy

It actually makes sense as hasn't Netanyahu been in New York City several times since October 7th? He's not welcome there and would be arrested by the NYPD.

The nypd would treat him like royalty and hand him to the feds to Spirit him out of there. NYPD are fucking Nazis. Maybe not all of the rank and file but the leadership. I forget if there are like 40, 60,000 of them. They're bigger than a lot of countries' armies.
- If Mamdani wins, they'll probably do some lame performative bullshit like turn their backs to him during his inauguration..
  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nypd-officers-again-turn-backs-on-mayor-de-blasio-at-cops-funeral/
  https://time.com/3652979/deblasio-nypd-funeral/

make sure to vote new yorkers

Fuck yes. We've let our colony go rogue and it's time to arrest the governor and bring him to justice.

Kathy Hochul?

So Trump and Netanyahu are definitely going to call his bluff. He needs to prepare for how that will play out. So do we.

Mamdani has to get elected first, once that's achieved he can worry about such trivialities as reality.
- He’s been the presumptive winner since his primary win. What data have you seen to suggest otherwise?

Interesting, but given that America isn't party to the ICC I wonder what legal reason he could provide for this.

The genocide convention
- The Geneva convention does not authorize arrests of individuals. That's what the ICC is for, but the US does not recognize the ICC.
- Right, but this is the exact reason even Bernie refuses to use that word. Because then we are supposed to do something about it.
- Perhaps, but there's the challenge of who gets to declare genocide formally. A city mayor no matter how large probably shouldn't be able to unilaterally do so when no authority recognized by his nation does so.
  I agree Netanyahu should be arrested, but I just don't think a city mayor can reasonably unilaterally do so. Certainly from a practical standpoint it's a nightmare if your own federal government will be at odds over the arrest of a foreign leader.

Eh. Shit like this is just political wordplay.
No one has ever been a nation leader and arrested in another country on charges before. Except for WW2 in the aftermath.

No one has ever been a nation leader and arrested in another country on charges before
No Ugandan-born Muslim anti-zionist Democratic Socialist has ever been mayor of New York before either. A lack of precedent doesn't make either impossible no matter how many people used to think so.
- When it happens I'll change my words.
- After leaders have, what is his name from the Philippines duterte.
The fact that the leaders in question knows damn well which countries they will be arrested in probably have something to do with it. If Netanyahu is told he will be arrested if he comes to NY there's a really good chance that he will not come to NY.
- He's already responded to this and said he'd come to NY with Trump.
- Eh I'll believe it when i see it.

Yeah this seems nice symbolically as a, you're not welcome in new york city thing, but practically a train wreck waiting to happen that is ultimately very unlikely to end up looking good for Mamdani if his bluff is called.

We could make it a celebration! I'd love to see that war criminal be held accountable!