Dear @ZohranKMamdani, Enough. You are embarrassing yourself and...
Mark Goldfeder@MarkGoldfeder
31 views
Jul 20, 2026
~4 min read
Advertisement
1
Dear @ZohranKMamdani,
Enough. You are embarrassing yourself and your legal team.
No, you can't arrest @netanyahu. Four independent bodies of law forbid it, and a fifth makes attempting it a federal felony.
Let me explain (slowly):
Enough. You are embarrassing yourself and your legal team.
No, you can't arrest @netanyahu. Four independent bodies of law forbid it, and a fifth makes attempting it a federal felony.
Let me explain (slowly):
Sally Goldenberg@SallyGold
NEW: @ZohranKMamdani is in "active conversation" with city lawyers over whether to arrest @netanyahu when he's in NYC for UNGA. Legal experts have raised doubts about this and the mayor said he's unsure of his legal authority to do it, but is studying it:
nytimes.com/2026/07/18/nyr…
nytimes.com/2026/07/18/nyr…
2
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu Start with the ICC warrant you invoked. It has no force whatsoever in New York, because the U.S. never ratified the Rome Statute.
In fact, Congress went further: the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2002 affirmatively prohibits American cooperation with the ICC.
In fact, Congress went further: the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2002 affirmatively prohibits American cooperation with the ICC.
3
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu No statute, treaty, or mechanism lets any American officer, federal or municipal, execute that warrant. In Lafontant v. Aristide, a 1994 Brooklyn case, plaintiff produced a Haitian arrest warrant for Haiti’s president; the court held only the Executive’s word on immunity counts.
4
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu Then there is head-of-state immunity, absolute for sitting leaders in American courts.
5
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu In Ye v. Zemin, a 2004 Seventh Circuit suit by victims against China’s then-president, the court held that once the Executive Branch declares a foreign head of state immune, courts must accept that determination “without reference to the underlying claims.”
6
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu In Yousuf v. Samantar, the Fourth Circuit’s 2012 foreign-official immunity decision, the court confirmed the doctrine covers heads of government, not just heads of state. Federal judges lose jurisdiction the moment the State Department speaks.
7
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu The 19th Precinct does not acquire what Article III surrenders.
Federal judges cannot lay a hand on him. Neither can the NYPD.
Federal judges cannot lay a hand on him. Neither can the NYPD.
8
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu Then there is the treaty that made New York the world’s host city in the first place.
9
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu The 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement, enacted into law that same year, provides in Section 11 that “the federal, state or local authorities of the United States shall not impose any impediments to transit to or from the headquarters district” of member states’ representatives.
10
Note those three words: or local authorities. The drafters saw a mayor like you coming in 1947 and wrote you out of the script in advance.
Section 12 adds that the protection applies “irrespective of the relations existing between” the visitor’s government and our own.
Section 12 adds that the protection applies “irrespective of the relations existing between” the visitor’s government and our own.
11
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu Underlying all of this is the Constitution. Foreign affairs belong to the federal government exclusively.
12
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu The Supreme Court said it plainest in American Insurance Association v. Garamendi, the 2003 decision voiding a California insurance law that intruded on foreign policy: “the Constitution entrusts foreign policy exclusively to the National Government.”
13
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu A city cannot conduct its own foreign policy toward Israel any more than it can declare war on it.
14
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu Run the substitution test: If the mayor of Tallahassee announced plans to arrest a visiting foreign leader beloved by progressives on a warrant from a tribunal America never joined, every editorial board in NY would call it a municipal coup against the Constitution.
15
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu The answer does not change when the target does.
16
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu And here is where you might end up endangering your own officers.
17
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu Under 18 U.S.C. § 112, it is a federal crime to “assault, strike, wound, imprison, or offer violence” to an internationally protected person, including a head of government “whenever such person is in a country other than his own.”
18
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu An arrest with no lawful basis is an imprisonment. And §112 is the lesser charge! Under 18 U.S.C. §1201, unlawfully seizing and confining an internationally protected person is federal kidnapping, punishable by any term of years up to life, with no interstate transport required.
19
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu BTW, 18 U.S.C. §878 makes knowingly and willfully threatening to violate either statute a felony of its own. In your scenario, the only people with genuine criminal exposure are the ones following your asinine order.
20
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu Even your own experts have surrendered the field. Yale’s @haroldhongjukoh, hardly a Netanyahu ally, suggested only that he might be “exposed” while driving through the city. Reread Section 11. The one opening Koh leaves is actually the one that the treaty closes by name: transit.
21
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu @haroldhongjukoh Setting the bluster aside, the genuinely alarming detail here is your claim that city lawyers have spent months in an “active conversation” about this.
22
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu @haroldhongjukoh There is exactly one competent answer to “can I arrest the prime minister of Israel,” and it fits in a single breath. George Grasso, the NYPD’s former deputy commissioner for legal matters, told the Times: “I would look the mayor in the eye and say, ‘No, we can’t do it.’”
23
@ZohranKMamdani @netanyahu @haroldhongjukoh That is the whole memo. Any lawyer still in a second meeting on it should be researching something more productive, like a new career, because law is clearly not for them.