SPEAKING OUT - For more than a decade, Benjamin Netanyahu could count on one extraordinarily valuable American political ally: Donald Trump. The relationship benefited both men. Trump embraced Netanyahu as evidence of his pro-Israel credentials, while Netanyahu used his access to an American president popular with Israeli voters to reinforce his image as the indispensable statesman who could protect Israel and command Washington’s attention.
That political arrangement has weakened. Trump’s standing among Israelis has fallen sharply. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is heading toward Israel’s October 27 election fighting for his political survival, with his coalition struggling to reach a governing majority and his opponents hoping voters are finally ready to turn the page.
Netanyahu needs something. More precisely, he needs someone.
Enter Zohran Mamdani.
The New York City mayor considers himself one of Netanyahu’s most determined American adversaries. Yet Mamdani may be accomplishing something Netanyahu’s own political strategists could not have scripted more effectively: He is giving Bibi an enemy.
And Netanyahu has built a political career confronting them.
Mamdani made opposition to Netanyahu and Israel’s conduct in Gaza a conspicuous part of his political identity. During his mayoral campaign, he pledged to pursue Netanyahu’s arrest should the Israeli prime minister come to New York, citing the International Criminal Court warrant issued against him.
After taking office, Mamdani continued the confrontation. He eventually acknowledged that New York City lacks the independent legal authority to execute the ICC warrant. But rather than letting the issue disappear, he called on the federal government to act instead.
Mamdani has called Netanyahu a “war criminal” and accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. To Mamdani’s progressive political base, such rhetoric may sound like moral clarity. To Netanyahu, it sounds like campaign material.
The Israeli prime minister quickly seized on the confrontation. And why wouldn’t he? Netanyahu understands something Mamdani appears to underestimate: Israeli elections are not New York elections.
Israelis can argue bitterly about Netanyahu. They can blame him for the failures surrounding October 7. They can oppose his coalition partners, his judicial agenda, his handling of Gaza, settlements, military conscription or relations with Washington.
But when Israelis believe their country is being singled out or threatened from abroad, the political equation can change. Netanyahu understands that instinct better than perhaps any Israeli politician of his generation.
His political career has repeatedly rested on a simple proposition: The world is dangerous. Israel has enemies. I know how to confront them.
That argument helped propel him to power amid the terrorism and instability of the 1990s. It helped return him to office in 2009. It fueled his warnings about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and shaped his confrontations with Hamas, Hezbollah and Tehran.
Again and again, Netanyahu has transformed Israeli elections from debates over domestic governance into referendums on security, survival and strength. Mamdani may now be helping him do it again.
When the mayor of America’s largest city argues that Israel’s prime minister should be arrested, Netanyahu does not have to manufacture evidence that hostility toward Israel is intensifying abroad. He can point directly at New York City Hall.
That is where Mamdani’s strategy risks spectacularly backfiring.
Mamdani believes he is isolating Netanyahu. Instead, he may be helping Netanyahu blur the distinction between opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu and hostility toward Israel itself. That distinction matters enormously.
An Israeli voter may intensely dislike Netanyahu while recoiling at the spectacle of an American mayor advocating the arrest of Israel’s prime minister. A voter may want Netanyahu removed from office while still believing that an American politician has crossed a line.
And a voter may blame Netanyahu for Israel’s domestic divisions while nevertheless rallying behind him when the argument shifts from Jerusalem politics to an external confrontation.
That is precisely the battlefield Netanyahu prefers.
He would rather campaign against Zohran Mamdani than against Israel’s cost of living. He would rather debate international hostility than domestic accountability. He would rather talk about protecting Israel from its adversaries than defend every decision his government has made.
Mamdani is helping him change the subject.
For years, Trump served as Netanyahu’s American political asset. Today, that relationship no longer provides Netanyahu with the same political security it once did.
Recent Israeli polling illustrates how dramatically perceptions have changed. Only a small minority now describe Trump as highly committed to protecting Israel’s security interests, while a majority believe his support for Israel depends primarily on whether it serves his own interests.
That leaves Netanyahu without the American political shield he once possessed. But Mamdani may be providing something almost as useful.
Trump helped Netanyahu by embracing him. Mamdani may help Netanyahu by attacking him.
The methods could not be more different, but the political effect may be remarkably similar: both allow Netanyahu to place himself at the center of Israel’s relationship with the outside world.
There is another irony. Mamdani wants Israelis and Americans to conclude that Netanyahu has made Israel more isolated. Yet his rhetoric could persuade some Israeli voters of the opposite—that Israel faces growing hostility regardless of who governs it, and therefore requires a leader willing to confront that hostility aggressively.
For an incumbent struggling to assemble another governing majority, that is an extraordinary political gift.
None of this means Israelis will forget October 7, the wars that followed, the divisions inside Israeli society or their disagreements with Netanyahu. Nor does it mean criticism of Israel or its government is inherently antisemitic. Democracies require vigorous criticism of governments and leaders, including Israel’s.
But Mamdani has personalized the confrontation around Netanyahu and the extraordinary question of whether Israel’s sitting prime minister should face arrest when visiting America’s largest city.
Netanyahu could hardly ask for a more useful political foil. Every escalation allows him to tell Israeli voters, “This is what we are facing.” Every threat of arrest allows him to answer, “Israel will not be intimidated.” And every attempt to isolate him internationally creates another opportunity to portray himself domestically as the leader standing between Israel and an increasingly hostile world. For an incumbent facing a difficult election, that narrative is political oxygen.
Mamdani believes he is putting Netanyahu on trial. Politically, he may be putting Netanyahu back in the game.
That is the central irony. Mamdani wants Netanyahu weakened, isolated and ultimately removed from power. But politics is measured by consequences, not intentions, and the consequence of this confrontation may be to reinforce the argument Netanyahu has spent his career making: Israel lives in a dangerous world, faces determined adversaries and requires a leader willing to confront them without apology.
For years, Donald Trump helped reinforce that argument from Washington. Today, he may no longer provide Netanyahu with the same political advantage. But Netanyahu may have found an unlikely replacement in New York.
His name is Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani wants to make Netanyahu politically toxic. Instead, he may be helping make Netanyahu politically necessary. And if Bibi pulls off one more political resurrection on October 27, the final irony will be impossible to miss: the man who tried so hard to bring Netanyahu down may have helped give him the political lifeline he needed to survive.
(Yonthan Mendal writes on Jewish community issues, antisemitism, Israel, and public policy. His articles focus on civic engagement, education, and issues affecting Jewish communities.)
