NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani called for the US to join the ICC and arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, branding him the architect of a horrific genocide on Theo Von’s podcast.

The New York Post reported that the mayor made the remarks in an interview that aired Thursday on the comedian’s “This Past Weekend” show.

Mamdani told host Theo Von the federal government should sign on to the International Criminal Court and carry out its orders against every target.

He put it this way:

"I believe that the US government should join the ICC. It should enforce its warrants for everyone,"

When the conversation turned to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mamdani went further.

"When you ask about the prime minister, we’re talking about the architect of a horrific genocide."

He added that if the choice were his, Washington would already have joined the court and honored every warrant it has issued. Von answered, “F, k yeah.”

The International Criminal Court claims 124 member states and says it can prosecute crimes by nationals of those states or crimes committed on their territory. The United States and Israel are not members and do not recognize its jurisdiction. In 2024 the court issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Campaign vow collapses once legal review hits reality

During his mayoral run, Mamdani had pledged to have Netanyahu arrested if the Israeli leader ever set foot in New York City. This summer he acknowledged he held no such power.

In July he reviewed every potential legal avenue and found none. He then reversed the campaign pledge after that review showed the city lacked authority to act on the foreign warrant.

Members of the Biden administration and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) had already slammed the ICC warrant as “shameful,” “unserious,” and “troubling.”

Netanyahu answers from the UN podium

Last month Netanyahu came to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. From the podium he tore into Mamdani, saying Jews no longer feel safe in the city under the mayor’s leadership.

He also ripped Mamdani for accusing the Jewish state of genocide in Gaza and slammed the mayor’s wife, Rama Duwaji, for liking anti-Israel social media posts.

Mamdani later described the attack as odd. He said he had just finished a meeting with the prime minister of the Netherlands at an LGBTQ center in downtown Manhattan when he learned what Netanyahu had said.

“It was strange,” Mamdani recalled. “I was having a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands at the LGBTQ center in downtown Manhattan... and then I get back from that meeting, and it’s like, ‘Oh, by the way, here’s what he was saying at the UN.’”

He framed the criticism as evasion:

"All of this is an attempt to distract from responsibility."

And he added, “If I was the architect of a genocide, I would probably talk about anything but that.”

Same pattern shows up in Mamdani’s wider orbit

The mayor’s posture fits a broader record of left-wing alliances and street pressure. He has hosted progressive figures at Gracie Mansion in settings that drew praise from major donors on the left, including the breakfast gathering Alex Soros publicly hailed.

One of his backed socialist congressional nominees was later arrested at an anti-Netanyahu protest near the United Nations, underscoring how the same network keeps pressing the issue in the streets.

That same circle has fueled demonstrations the mayor himself helped encourage, even as he later chose not to appear at the anti-Netanyahu protests he helped stoke.

Meanwhile his office has run a large private messaging operation that raises separate questions about transparency and records law, a 200-strong influencer network through encrypted Signal chat that operates beyond ordinary public channels.

None of those side stories change the core facts of the podcast. Mamdani is again calling for the United States to submit to a court it has never joined and to seize a sitting allied prime minister on a warrant Washington has already rejected.

New Yorkers elected a mayor to keep streets safe and budgets honest, not to chase foreign arrest warrants the city cannot enforce and the country has never accepted.