Mayoral missteps

The Mayors of New York and London have both weighed in on the Gaza genocide claim in the past week, calling for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested if he visits either city. In both cases it is an empty threat and an opportunistic piece of political theatre. At a time when Jews have been violently attacked in both cities, the two mayors would be better off trying to protect their Jewish residents rather than engaging in this kind of reckless posturing.

First, the facts. There is an outstanding arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Netanyahu (and for then-Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant), for allegedly commissioning war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants the US government to enforce this warrant if Netanyahu visits New York, because, he says, Netanyahu is “the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people.” When Channel 4 news asked London Mayor Sadiq Khan if he would do the same, he concurred, calling Netanyahu “a perpetrator of genocide… he’s broken the law and I think justice needs to happen.” “People who commit genocide”, Khan went on, “are not welcome in London.” We’ll come back to that.

This is a classic bait-and-switch, because the ICC warrant that Mamdani and Khan want to be enforced is not for genocide. On the contrary: when the ICC issued the warrant they explicitly rejected a request for it to include the crime of extermination, because the evidence did not support it. Even if Netanyahu were to be arrested and convicted under the ICC warrant it would not prove that Israel is guilty of genocide, because that is not what the ICC has charged him with. This distinction might seem trivial; after all, being accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity is bad enough. But “genocide” is a political label that Israel’s enemies have been trying to attach to it for decades, as a shortcut to declaring the entire Israeli state illegitimate. If the Israeli Prime Minister is guilty of war crimes, it would be a matter of personal disgrace; whereas if the Israeli state has committed genocide, then the entire nation is damned. This is why Israel’s opponents are determined to make everything seem like evidence of genocide. Anything less simply will not meet their political needs.

This is part of a campaign to rebrand Zionism - the Jewish desire for national self-determination in the ancestral Jewish homeland - as a racist, supremacist ideology and a manifestation of European settler colonialism, that has genocidal intent woven into its founding ethos. The sobering scale of the devastation and loss of life in Gaza provides a golden opportunity to make this label stick, so everything must be about genocide, even when, as with the ICC warrant, it isn’t.

The now-disgraced ICC prosecutor who instigated the warrants, Karim Khan KC, who is no friend of Israel, resisted the pressure to go along with the “genocide” charge as recently as May this year. In a telling exchange, he advised a bemused and frustrated Mehdi Hasan that the evidence for genocide simply isn’t there, and “it would be a reckless prosecutor to move simply because of clamour. You move based upon evidence.”

Not just a reckless prosecutor, but a reckless Mayor too. The belief that Israel is committing a genocide, and that it deliberately kills children and has starved Palestinians, is the driving force behind the rise in antisemitism in the United Kingdom and the United States today. This is the central narrative of the protests that regularly feature antisemitic and violent rhetoric on London’s streets. It is the excuse offered by Palestine Action members when they smash up offices in London or arms factories around the country. And it appears regularly in the antisemitic incidents reported to CST, when ordinary Jews going about their lives in our capital city are abused and harassed by random racists. “Oh, you’re Jewish - you must support genocide”, is what a fellow student said to the university-age daughter of a friend of mine, on discovering there was a Jew in their class.

Both Mayors have condemned antisemitic attacks in their cities. Presumably they would fiercely reject any suggestion that their behaviour might encourage, even unwittingly, the violent extremists and antisemites who are making Jewish life in London and New York so difficult right now. But if they don’t want it to look that way, they should take more care over their language, and be much more visible in demonstrating their opposition to antisemitism. When ambulances belonging to Hatzola (a Jewish-run ambulance service for the whole community) were set on fire in Golders Green in March, Khan visited a different Hatzola base in another part of London the following day, rather than rushing to the scene of the attack. When a series of synagogues and other Jewish community premises were attacked by Iranian-directed arsonists in April, London’s Mayor was nowhere to be seen. It was left to the Metropolitan Police to hold a press conference outside one of the targeted synagogues. After criticism for this absence, Khan held a private visit to Finchley Reform Synagogue a couple of days later; but then, when two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green allegedly by an Islamist terrorist at the end of April, Khan, again, did not turn up in person to show his solidarity.

This lack of visible support is compounded by these latest statements. It is not just that Mamdani and Khan back the flawed genocide charge (I have written elsewhere about the shoddy nature of the allegation, but if you want a bite-sized explanation for why it is so baseless, watch this clip of US commentator Bret Stephens). It is that they endorse the idea that, as Khan put it, “People who commit genocide are not welcome in London.” There is an ongoing campaign to make life in Britain intolerable for any Israeli nationals, including dual national British-Israelis, who may have served in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). As Israel has a conscript army, this effectively means all Israelis, give or take. This includes attempts to have Israelis living in Britain prosecuted for alleged war crimes, and efforts to exclude Israelis - and inevitably, by extension, Jews - from academic and cultural life. There is even a demand signed by over 26,000 people, including several MPs and the leader of the Green Party, for Israelis entering the UK to be subjected to special monitoring if they have done their national army service.

There is no legal basis for these demands, and one attempted prosecution of an Israeli reservist was recently thrown out by the UK courts. But it all adds to an atmosphere in which Israelis and Jews are treated, by some, as fair game for harassment and discrimination. “Nobody wants to live next to a potential war criminal”, asserted the Declassified UK petition calling for Israelis entering the UK to be monitored; and if, as Khan says, Netanyahu is not welcome in London, why would the same not apply to ordinary Israelis too? In its most extreme form, this kind of thinking encourages the mentality that, for example, forced Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch (the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University) and his family into hiding after receiving death and rape threats. What was the Rabbi’s supposed crime? Answering the call to do his Israeli army reserve duty, just a few short weeks after Israel had suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history.

It is a mistake, and a dangerous one, to allege, as some do, that the explanation for this is simply that Mamdani and Khan are both Muslims. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood MP, is also a Muslim, was quick to visit Manchester on the day of the Heaton Park Synagogue attack, and her department has just delivered an unprecedented funding package for extra policing for Jewish communities. Meanwhile, Zack Polanski is Jewish, never misses an opportunity to tell people as much, and wields the genocide charge more readily than anyone. Ascribing political choices to people’s identity just risks encouraging a different sort of prejudice. What matters is what politicians say and do, not their faith or colour.

A Mayor’s first job ought to be to look after the needs and interests of the residents of their city and the citizens of their country. Mamdani and Khan both know that they have no authority to enforce the ICC warrant, but that isn’t the point. There are votes at stake, clicks to harvest, and a Zionist power structure to dismantle. Even if they do not intend to encourage the antisemites who feed off every allegation of genocide - the alternative would be unconscionable - right now, when Jews are being stabbed in the streets of London and New York, the impact of their words is more important than their intentions. National government, the police and CPS are all finally pulling in the same direction to try to protect British Jews. It is essential that our local political leaders do the same.