On July 21, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted a propaganda video message urging the federal government to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Under the pretext of enforcing the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) bogus arrest warrant targeting the Israeli leader, and echoing age-old antisemitic blood libels, Mamdani delivered a litany of slanders meant to tar the Jewish state as nothing less than a genocidal, child-killing enemy of humanity. On Instagram alone, the video garnered (at the time of this writing) 10 million likes – a grim reminder of the power of antisemitic demagoguery to captivate audiences the world over.
What is apparent from the outset is that Mamdani is not engaging in objective analysis of Israeli conduct during wartime or of Netanyahu’s decision making. He is spreading libels crafted and instrumentalized to hurt Israel in the service of ideological anti-Israel animus, or antizionsim. Accusing the Jewish state of committing genocide provokes anger worldwide and increases pressure on Israel to weaken its defensive efforts against Hamas – the party that actually committed genocide when it sent thousands of armed men to “end the children of Israel” via rape, kidnap, and indiscriminate murder on October 7, 2023.
Mamdani’s history of antizionism is beyond dispute. Indeed, he has openly described himself as an antizionist and slurred the New York state government in 2021 as a “bastion of Zionist thought.” Mamdani is affiliated with the far-left Democratic Socialists of America, which reacted to Hamas’ act of genocide in Israel by condemnding Israel. At the time, Mamdani similarly reacted to the slaughter by implicitly blaming the Jewish state for the mass murder of its own citizens by an antisemitic army, calling for “ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”
Although no accusation leveled in Mamdani’s video reflects good faith, the falsehoods cannot go unchallenged. Correcting the record amid such widespread propaganda is imperative. Accordingly, this piece breaks down Mamdani’s calumnies, frequently drawing on the work of analysts who have assiduously debunked antizionist propaganda since, and well before, October 7.
- “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal – the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people.”
Genocide is a crime of intent. Its standard contemporary definition is outlined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948 (bolded emphasis added):
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Israel’s war aims are not, and have never been, to destroy the Palestinians as such. Immediately after Hamas’ savage, indiscriminate slaughter in Israel, Netanyahu made clear that his objective was to destroy Hamas – a just and necessary goal given the terror group’s crimes. In the prime minister’s exact words:
What happened today is unprecedented in Israel – and I will see to it that it does not happen again. The entire government is behind this decision.
The IDF will immediately use all its strength to destroy Hamas’s capabilities. We will destroy them and we will forcefully avenge this dark day that they have forced on the State of Israel and its citizens. As Bialik wrote: ‘Revenge for the blood of a little child has yet been devised by Satan’.
All of the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in, that wicked city, we will turn them into rubble.
…
I can promise one thing: With the help of G-d, the forces that we all have in common and our faith in the Eternal One of Israel, we will win.
Pledging destruction of and victory over terrorists who commit horrific atrocities is standard among American politicians. In 2015, President Obama vowed, “We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us.” On September 20, 2001, nine days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush said, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated,” and “the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows.”
Consider also President Roosevelt’s speech in the wake of Imperial Japan’s surprise attack against Pearl Harbor – an assault that, like October 7 to Israel, posed an existential threat to the United States: “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory … With confidence in our armed forces with the unbounding determination of our people we will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God.”
No serious person regards these leaders as genocidal. In fact, the opposite – the U.S. and allied victory in World War II is widely regarded as one of the proudest moments in American history, representing triumph over evil. Yet, Mamdani and his fellow DSA travelers would slander the Jewish state as genocidal for steadfastly fighting to secure its future against a force committed to its elimination.
Furthermore, an objective analysis of Israel’s wartime conduct thoroughly disproves the genocide lie. John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, has written about this extensively. As he wrote in July 2025:
Israel has taken extraordinary steps to limit civilian harm. It warns before attacks using text messages, phone calls, leaflets, and broadcasts. It opens safe corridors and pauses operations so civilians can leave combat areas. It tracks civilian presence down to the building level. I have seen missions delayed or canceled because children were nearby. I have seen Israeli troops come under fire and still be ordered not to shoot back because civilians might be harmed.
…
Israel has delivered more humanitarian aid to Gaza than any military in history has provided to an enemy population during wartime. More than 94,000 trucks carrying over 1.8 million tons of aid have entered the territory. Israel has supported hospitals, repaired water pipelines, increased access to clean water, and enabled over 36,000 patients to leave Gaza for treatment abroad.
The IDF has coordinated millions of vaccine doses, supplied fuel for hospitals and infrastructure, and facilitated the flow of food and medicine through the UN, aid groups, and private partners.
2. “[Netanyahu] is responsible for the killing of more than 73,000 people.”
This figure originates from the Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths, nor does it clarify the cause of any individual death. Israel has said that between October 7 and the October 10, 2025 ceasefire, it killed approximately 23,600 combatants. These two figures result in a combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio of roughly 1:2 – a figure comparable to that of the U.S.-led effort to liberate Mosul from ISIS in 2016-2017 (1:2.5).
Israel’s detractors present casualty figures without this information because the goal is to frame Israel as a perpetrator of wanton slaughter, not a beleaguered democracy forced into war against a genocidal enemy that entrenches its personnel and assets in dense urban areas. If Hamas and other enemy combatants are erased from the picture when discussing death and destruction in Gaza, then the explanation for the territory’s tragedy can only be Israeli predation.
Such lies by omission obscure the most logical and morally sound explanation for the calamity in Gaza: Hamas’ decision to wage exterminationist war in Israel before retreating to Gaza’s cities. Genocidal armed forces that behave so inhumanely naturally subject the surrounding civilians to immense harm. Failure to recognize this implicitly grants those who commit atrocities the right to shield themselves from retribution by exploiting civilian infrastructure. As former Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Army David French wrote in 2019 (emphasis added):
[Hamas] uses civilian facilities for military purposes, it tries to blend in with the civilian population, and it uses civilians as human shields. This is crucial — under the law of war none of these things in any way limit Israel’s right to defend itself. So long as Israel otherwise complies with the laws of war, the resulting civilian casualties and damages to civilian structures are Hamas’s moral and legal responsibility. It’s that simple.
Think of it like this: Nations have a right to defend themselves, and that right of self-defense is not abrogated when an opponent fights dirty. If an army tried to march into Philadelphia behind a wall of women and children, the citizens of Philadelphia would not have to surrender if fighting meant killing those human shields. Instead, they could fight back and then hold war-crimes trials against the attackers for the resulting civilian deaths.
3. “For the maiming of tens of thousands of children, as those who survive undergo amputation without anesthesia. For the targeting of neonatal hospitals and maternity care centers, denying newborns even the chance to live … And just last month, the UN confirmed that Palestinian children continue to be deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli armed forces more than eight months after the so-called ceasefire.”
There is zero evidence that Israel “targeted” neonatal hospitals and maternity care centers – it is simply a fabricated claim.
In November 2023, the IDF operated in and near Shifa hospital, reporting that:
…the [Shifa] hospital buildings were used as emergency assets for the ops rooms of the Hamas Gaza City Brigade. Additionally, during fighting, weapons and other means were taken to the underground floors of the hospital. During IDF operations, large amounts of weapons were found in the MRI building in the hospital complex. Additionally, an operational tunnel shaft was located that contains a large cache of weapons and is currently being investigated. In the cardiology ward, a weapons storage unit was found along with weapons and an interrogation room. Explosives were located in the physiotherapy ward, and explosive and communications devices were found in the Qatari building of the hospital. Additionally, evidence that hostages were kept in the hospital was released this week.
U.S. intelligence agencies concurred that Hamas and other terrorist groups used Shifa hospital to hold hostages and direct operations.
During the course of fighting against terrorists who cynically and illegally exploit medical institutions, Israeli troops took steps to save the lives of newborns in peril. On November 20, 2023, the IDF announced that it helped facilitate “the safe evacuation of newborn Gazan babies from the pediatric ward of Shifa Hospital to receive essential medical treatment in Egypt” while providing incubators. Five days earlier, the military confirmed that it had successfully delivered incubators, baby food, and other medical supplies to the hospital while tasking Arabic-speaking soldiers with aiding distribution efforts. Why would an army “targeting” neonatal care facilities undertake such lifesaving efforts? Clearly, it wouldn’t.
What of Mamdani’s claim that “the UN confirmed” purposeful Israeli murder of children? He is almost certainly referring to the June 2026 report by the so-called “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel” (COI) – a creation of the UN’s brazenly anti-Israel Human Rights Council. Even a cursory examination of the document reveals absurdities that betray an underlying malice, let alone a lack of objectivity.
For example, the report’s authors, who purport to describe “the deliberate targeting and killing of Palestinian children” cite a December 2023 quote by Israeli security forces to make the case that Israeli statements and behavior “indicate a de facto blanket permission to target civilian locations widely in Gaza.” The quote in question reads:
Whereas in past operations or wars, Israel has been more selective or “accurate” with regards to the exact types of Hamas targets struck, given that Israel’s overall objective was limited to diminishing Hamas’s capabilities, Israel is now focused on dismantling Hamas’s capabilities altogether, i.e. causing “maximum damage” to Hamas’ military capabilities in their entirety.
In other words, the COI concluded that when Israel says its goal is to target Hamas, what it really means is that it seeks to murder civilians. That reflects enmity, not honest analysis.
Enmity shines through elsewhere. In the report’s conclusion, the authors write that “Mental harm [by Israel to Palestinian children] has become intergenerational, producing a distinctive ‘occupied psyche’ in which the freedom to play, imagine, hope, and develop an identity has been eroded.” Israeli Jews, according to the COI, are so all-powerful that they have the ability to purposely engineer away the ability to “imagine” and “hope” across generations. One cannot help but wonder whether the COI researchers believe that Israelis possess supernatural abilities.
Should the COI’s credibility vis-a-vis Israel still be in doubt, its September 2025 report reaches similarly preposterous conclusions, such as:
The Commission therefore finds that the Israeli authorities intended to kill as many Palestinians as possible through its military operations in Gaza since 7 October 2023 and knew that the means and methods of warfare employed would cause mass deaths of Palestinians, including children.
A state with nuclear weapons intended to maximize death in a dense urban environment, yet undertook a campaign that resulted in a combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio comparable to the decidedly non-genocidal American battle against ISIS in Mosul, all while facilitating vaccinations and millions of tons of food and aid shipments, evacuating civilians from combat zones, and implementing humanitarian pauses in fighting? One does not need to minimize the horrors of urban warfare to recognize that the accusation is self-evidently ludicrous.
The COI’s “investigations” of Israel clearly cannot be trusted, yet Mamdani draws on them to accuse Israel of deliberate child murder. It is a grave accusation employed to paint Israelis as faceless monsters – a libel meant to dehumanize. No other country in the world, and certainly no other democracy, faces such allegations so vehemently and ubiquitously.
Such defamation needs to be understood in its proper historical context. Accusing Jews of deliberate cruelty to children is a long-standing antisemitic trope. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum details the long history – dating back to at least the 2nd century BC – of false accusations of Jewish bloodlust for children that inspired mass hysteria and persecutory violence. The infamous “blood libel” outlandishly charged that Jews murder Christian children to use their blood to make matzah.
Today, antizionist hate marches regularly feature imagery of bloody children, while cartoons emanating from the Arab world depict Israelis consuming blood, including that of children. The “victims” are frequently portrayed as Palestinian, indicating a contemporary variation of an age-old libel. As recently as June of this year, a Jewish woman was assaulted on a New York City subway car by a woman who screamed, “Jews are eating kids.” The mayor’s demagoguery inflames such hatred.
- “For the countless people [Netanyahu] starved as he blocked food and humanitarian aid from reaching them.”
Figures detailed by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) simply belie such a claim. According to COGAT data, between October 7 and October 10, 2025, 2,174,489 tons of total aid, including food, water, shelter, medical supplies, and gas, entered Gaza via land, air, and sea. Between October 10 and July 19 alone, more than 1,900,000 tons of food, as well as more than 20,000 tons of medical equipment, entered the territory.
Israeli leaders did stop aid shipments to Gaza between March 2 and May 19, 2025, during which time plans to implement operations by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – a U.S.- and Israeli-backed food distribution outfit designed to be impermeable to Hamas control – were underway. (GHF began operations on May 26, 2025 and shut down in November of that year.) During the first two months of 2025 before the temporary halt in shipments, 501,362 tons of aid entered Gaza.
Other factors that are important to consider:
- Dysfunctional distribution mechanisms amid the chaos of war surely exacerbated human suffering in Gaza. But as researcher Andrew Fox has noted, such factors alongside a temporary pause in aid shipments – a policy which he assessed as an error – “cannot rescue the claim of a continuous Israeli policy to starve Gaza. The quantities of food that entered Gaza are simply too large.”
- Hamas obstructs food distribution efforts. The United Nations admitted as much in July, announcing that Hamas gunmen entered a UN World Food Program (WFP) warehouse and attacked two truck drivers. According to Ramiz Alakbarov, UN Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, “These incidents are not isolated … and reflect an increasingly dangerous pattern of intimidation, violence and obstruction, including smuggling attempts, targeting and abusing humanitarian operations,” therefore “disrupting the delivery of life-saving assistance, and further constraining the ability of humanitarian organizations to operate at a time when civilians across Gaza continue to face immense and pressing humanitarian conditions.”
- The United Nations itself has, in the very recent past, temporarily halted aid operations in areas run by terrorists holding hostages. As the Associated Press reported in April 2025, “The [WFP] has halted food shipments to Houthi-held areas of Yemen and suspended food distribution there after the rebels looted one of its warehouses in the north,” citing the program’s deputy director. The report noted that the Houthis “in recent months have detained dozens of U.N. staffers, as well as people associated with aid groups, civil society and the once-open U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital.” WFP head Carl Skau insisted, “We cannot accept that our colleagues are being detained, and much less so that our colleagues are dying in detention.”
Only Israel, it would seem, must accept such abuses. Tellingly, there is no public record of Mamdani condemning the UN for its halt of aid shipments in Yemen.
Finally, what of Mamdani’s reference to the “countless people” Netanyahu ostensibly starved? According to the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), a body hardly predisposed to pro-Israel bias:
As of 5 September 2025, 361 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition, including 130 children. As of 15 August 2025, Famine (IPC Phase 5)—with reasonable evidence—is confirmed in Gaza Governorate. After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death. Another 1.07 million people (54%) are in Emergency (IPC Phase 4), and 396 000 people (20%) are in Crisis (IPC Phase 3).
These figures underscore the devastating and tragic effects of war, not a deliberate policy of mass starvation. The IPC’s (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) declaration of famine in Gaza Governorate in August 2025 is highly suspect, as it infers a significantly higher death toll from malnutrition than what Hamas’ health ministry reported (the numbers above that WHO cited). Without such extrapolation, a malnutrition death toll of 361, while heartbreaking, is significantly below what would satisfy the IPC’s normal criteria for famine declaration.
Furthermore, more recent data point to substantial improvement. On July 22 – one day after Mamdani posted his video – UNICEF published a survey covering 83 percent of Gaza’s population which found an average acute child (0-59 months) malnutrition rate based on weight-for-height (WHZ) of 0.5 – lower than Finland’s rate of 1.6 in 2023 and Portugal’s of 1.1 in 2016. In the researchers’ own words, “Wasting by WHZ is low across all domains, suggesting no widespread acute malnutrition at population level,” and “[Severe acute malnutrition] by WHZ remains very low in all domains, but any severe case still requires active follow-up.” Such figures among a majority of Gaza’s population simply would not exist amid an Israeli policy to purposely starve Gaza.
- “For the gunning down of hundreds of aid workers and journalists.”
Israel does not purposely “gun down” aid workers and journalists. Deaths of individuals identifying as such in Gaza reflect either errors or the targeting of combatants attempting to conceal their affiliations with terrorist organizations.
For example, following a widely reported tragedy in early April 2024 during which IDF drone operators bombed several vehicles operated by World Central Kitchen (WCK) personnel, killing seven, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi profusely apologized. He clarified that the aid workers were misidentified, praised WCK’s work, pledged to continue facilitating humanitarian aid deliveries in Gaza, and called the bombing a “grave mistake.” Netanyahu, too, insisted the tragedy was “unintended.”
To conclude from this course of events that Israel purposely murdered aid workers, one would need to make incredible assumptions. If Israel’s war aims reflected pure malice against Gazan civilians (as the UN alleges), why would it allow aid workers to enter Gaza in the first place? To simply murder them? If that were the case, why would the highest levels of the Israeli political and security echelons profusely apologize after several aid workers were killed? There is nothing to be gained from such behavior – assuming hidden Israeli bloodlust when the evidence points toward error amid a complex strategic environment reflects bias and bad faith.
Indeed, mistakes are common during war, and even U.S. operations are no exception. In various military campaigns during the past several decades, U.S. forces have accidentally struck civilian targets such as air-raid shelters, embassies, and even a hospital. But, as former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Gen Philip M. Breedlove, USAF (ret.), and former Commander, United Nations Command, ROK-United States Combined Forces Command, and U.S. Forces Korea GEN. James D. Thurman, USA (ret.) have noted:
Such mistakes are not a reflection on the evil character or intentions of the military that commits them. Instead, militaries should be judged not on whether they commit mistakes, but on the steps they take in the aftermath of such tragic incidents … Israel’s willingness to own up to its mistakes, identifies Israel, by U.S. standards, as one of the few militaries that “goes to the greatest lengths” to avoid civilian casualties.
Other cases, however, involved strikes against individuals who, according to the IDF, were members of terrorist organizations while doubling as journalists or aid workers. Some examples and noteworthy developments include:
- In December 2024, Israel said it targeted Hazmi Kadih, a WCK employee who participated in the October 7 massacre.
- In October 2024, Israel targeted Mohammad Abu Itiwi. Despite his employment with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN apparatus tasked solely with providing for Palestinians, Itiwi was responsible for targeting Israeli civilians fleeing the Nova music festival on October 7. (The links between UNRWA and Hamas are extensive. According to Israeli intelligence, “over 450 terrorists belonging to terrorist organizations in Gaza, mainly Hamas, are also employed by UNRWA. In recent investigations, the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) has concluded that 9 UNRWA workers took part in the raping, killing and slaughtering of Israelis during the October 7 massacre.”)
- After it launched an airstrike killing Al-Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif in August 2025, the IDF said that al-Sharif was receiving a salary from Hamas and that intelligence indicated that he “was an active Hamas military wing operative at the time of his elimination,” orchestrating “rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and IDF troops.” The IDF published Hamas documents obtained in Gaza that it said confirmed al-Sharif’s affiliation with the terror group.
- In late June 2026, the Committee to Protect Journalists announced that it had “removed eight names from its Killed database because they were later established to have been Hamas or [Palestine Islamic Jihad] combatants” and that it will conduct “a full review of the names on our lists to confirm that no one who was actively engaged in combat is listed in our data.”
- “There is a reason the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for [Netanyahu’s] arrest.”
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant targeting the Israeli prime minister charges responsibility “for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024” – that is, accusations already addressed here. Indeed, the court’s warrant is so frivolous and predicated on such easily-debunked premises that then-U.S. President Joe Biden denounced it as “outrageous.”
Notably, Mamdani is quick to trust the “reason” for the ICC’s warrant targeting Netanyahu but clearly doesn’t grapple with the U.S. president’s reasons for opposing it. Beyond the baseless charges against the Israeli Prime Minister, the United States is not party to the 1998 international treaty that created the court, known as the Rome Statute. Therefore, “ICC warrants are … meaningless in America, and arresting Netanyahu would be a naked violation of a foreign head of state’s immunity,” as international law scholar Eugene Kontorovich noted.
Stated plainly, the mayor of New York City seeks the arrest of the democratically elected leader of a close partner nation based on foreign edicts. This is not a rational or foreseeable path for a democracy that values national sovereignty and whose conduct is subject to its own rule of law.
Conclusion
On the basis of no evidence, but rather conveying the propagandistic messaging of social media and media outlets such as Al-Jazeera, Mamdani would have his followers believe that Netanyahu has committed “crimes so grave they offend all of humanity” and that “Anyone, with their eyes, with their heart, with their conscience, should recognize the devastation he has wrought and understand that he belongs before a court of law.”
The mayor seems determined to vindicate the late Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis’s observation that antisemitism frequently manifests as accusations of Jewish “cosmic evil.”
On Instagram, many user comments below Mamdani’s video lauded his supposed “bravery,” but his repetition of false propaganda isn’t brave – it’s opportunistic. During a time when denigration of Israel pervades academia, Hollywood, western parliaments, a broad network of legacy NGOs, the United Nations apparatus, opinion sections of the most widely-read newspapers, and social media platforms, the Mayor is simply pandering to the crowd with special appeal to the far-left fringe.
Countering lies such as Mamdani’s in the face of a tidal wave of prejudice would seemingly reflect more courage than riding that wave.
