Zohran Mamdani Prefers International Law Over America’s

Socialist New York State assemblyman and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has made “affordability” a campaign focus, promising to freeze rents and eliminate bus fares. But Mamdani’s recent comments about international law—and his vow to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu for delivery to the International Criminal Court (ICC)—reveal the radical ideology that motivates him far more deeply than does affordability.

On June 8, B’nai Jeshurun, a venerable Upper West Side synagogue, sponsored a mayoral candidate forum “for the Jewish Community” with the theme “A Just and Inclusive NYC.” The moderators’ questions touched on predictable topics, such as how each candidate would handle the rising tide of anti-Semitic incidents in New York and address unruly protests such as those at Columbia University.

Tensions escalated, however, when Mamdani was pressed on his views about Israel. He was asked to account for his support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the global economy, including scientific and cultural exchange. He explained his position as a matter of aligning New York City with international law. “Wherever Eric Adams’s administration or another administration has taken us out of compliance with international law,” Mamdani said, “I would bring New York City back into that compliance.”

The idea that New York City has fallen out of step with international law, and that restoring compliance would constitute a return to norms, is meaningless for several reasons. There is no international law requiring states to boycott and sanction Israel. If there were, almost every nation on Earth would be in violation of it—while Iran, Mauritania, Venezuela, and Yemen would be among the few law-abiding countries.

Further, it’s not clear what it would mean for an American city to “comply” with such a law when the rest of the United States was not doing so. What would a Mayor Mamdani’s policy look like in practice? Would he prevent New York City schools, for instance, from purchasing products from a major food distributor unless the supply chain was entirely free of Israeli goods? Would he bar local hospitals from hiring Israeli-trained doctors? The absurdities cascade.

Defending his promise to have the NYPD arrest Israeli prime minister Netanyahu for delivery to the Hague, Mamdani repeated his formulation: “I think that this should be a city in compliance with international law.” But New York City is home to the United Nations, and national leaders who attend its General Assembly do so under diplomatic immunity. The federal government has not ratified the ICC’s enabling Rome Statute, so Mamdani seems to suggest that the NYPD should operate as the arm of a global police force that has no legal jurisdiction in the United States.

Mamdani even admits as much. “There are times when courage is required,” he explained. Citing the example of Gavin Newsom, who as mayor of San Francisco issued same-sex marriage licenses when California law did not recognize such unions, Mamdani said, “what I am trying to showcase is a belief that international law is something that should be honored, should be respected, and something that we should actually bring our city into compliance with.” But there is no international law regarding same-sex marriage. What does he mean?

Mamdani believes that the law, as passed by state and national legislatures and carried out by elected executives, is subordinate to something he calls “international law,” a fragmented and toothless set of treaties that, at least regarding the ICC, are not recognized by any of the five most populated nations in the world. Mamdani vows to govern New York according to a higher, undefined mandate that he sees as responsive to the needs of the globe, not the petty grievances of the locals.

This is not government or law by any standard recognizable to Americans—it is revolution, through which, as Lenin wrote, the “dictatorship of the proletariat is rule, conquered and maintained by the proletariat’s violence against the bourgeoisie, unrestricted by any laws.”

The desire for socialism is always accompanied by a ready submission to the state. Zohran Mamdani is explaining that, for socialists, law is whatever they can get away with. New Yorkers can’t say they weren’t warned.

Photo by VINCENT ALBAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images