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The Lies behind Mamdani's Netanyahu Libel Are the Real Threat
(JNS) Jonathan S. Tobin - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani isn't going to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in Manhattan for the annual UN General Assembly meetings in September. Like all world leaders, Netanyahu is protected by the terms by which the U.S. secured the placement of the world body in New York City after the Second World War. Moreover, the U.S. is not a party to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, whose corrupt former chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, indicted the Israeli leader on false charges of having "intentionally and knowingly deprived" Gaza's population of food, water, fuel and medicine in 2024. The Trump administration has rightly sought to dismantle the court, whose activities are a travesty of justice and motivated solely by political prejudice against the West, and especially Israel. To those who support the mayor, Israel is the epitome of international evil. They truly believe that the actions the Jewish state took to defend itself against the Palestinian Arab terrorists who launched a war on Oct. 7, 2023, with the largest mass slaughter since the Holocaust, were genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. And no reasoned arguments will convince them otherwise. If you believe the existence of one Jewish state on the planet is not only illegitimate but that the key to solving all of the world's problems is bound up in its destruction, then you are ready to believe any charge against it, no matter how false or outrageous. The belief that Israel and Jews are "white" oppressors, and that Palestinians are oppressed "people of color" who are their perennial victims, is contrary to the facts about both peoples. Jews are the most oppressed people of the last two millennia, and the majority of Israelis are people of color since they trace their origins to North Africa and the Middle East. The rise of current advocates for antisemitism, the hatred of Jews and Israel, like the mayor, isn't unprecedented in history. They have been defeated before by decent people.