Hector La Parka

People claim Mamdani can’t pursue arresting Netanyahu in New York, so we shouldn’t expect it. But history shows NYC has been a stage for such political gestures before. In 1995, Mayor Giuliani personally expelled Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from a UN concert at Lincoln Center, even though Arafat had been formally invited by the UN for the organization’s 50th anniversary. Giuliani labeled him a terrorist and ordered NYPD to remove him, sparking international outrage including from UN officials and the State Department as it violated diplomatic protocol, but Giuliani did it anyway, turning NYC into a platform for anti-Palestinian theatrics. If the city could act so decisively against Palestinian leadership, there is precedent for punishing Israeli leadership, particularly when the cause is genocide. The legality is only part of the story as the symbolic stage has long been politicized. Mamdani made this promise unprompted, and if he can stick to it, it would be a remarkable inversion of decades of political theater in NYC.