Former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, now chairman of the Yashar party, issued a forceful public rebuke on Wednesday of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, after Mamdani accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of war crimes and genocide against the Palestinian people. Eisenkot did not mince words, describing the mayor's remarks as an irresponsible distortion and pure antisemitism, and warning that such rhetoric has no place in public discourse, in 2026 or at any time.
Mamdani, in a statement released overnight, called Netanyahu a war criminal and the architect of what he described as a horrifying genocide against the Palestinian people, and accused him of responsibility for the deaths of more than 73,000 people along with the maiming of tens of thousands of children. Mamdani went further, accusing Netanyahu of starving civilians by blocking humanitarian aid, and of responsibility for the killing of humanitarian workers and journalists, adding that American taxpayer funding was behind the bombs involved. He pointed to the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant against Netanyahu as validation of his claims, though his office subsequently acknowledged that New York City has no independent legal authority to enforce that warrant.
Eisenkot's Response: A Defense Rooted In October 7
Eisenkot's rebuttal did not shy away from the founding trauma at the center of the current war. He described the morning of October 7, 2023, when Hamas and its allied terrorist factions launched what he called a murderous massacre against children, women, and civilians beginning at 6:29 a.m., an event he characterized as the gravest act of terrorism and hate crime the Jewish people have experienced since the Holocaust, one in which Israelis, Jews and non-Jews alike, were murdered, burned, raped, and slaughtered in their own communities.
"No power on earth can rewrite history and turn the attacker into the victim," Eisenkot said, adding that no argument can blunt the horror of what Hamas did to civilians in their own homes and their own country. He said that in the face of such terror, of the same base character New York itself confronted on the morning of September 11, the truth always stands firm.
Turning directly to Mamdani, Eisenkot said the mayor's words amounted to an irresponsible distortion, pure antisemitism disconnected from the facts, and dangerous, inflammatory rhetoric that has no place, now or ever. He added a pointed warning about the moment: even as populism dominates public life and some leaders count on the public's notoriously short memory, no one will be permitted to question the Jewish people's right to live securely in their own land. Eisenkot said Israel would not accept any attempt to draw an equivalence between terrorist organizations and the IDF, which he described as the nation's insurance policy, an army that operates according to clear values, under international law, and on the side of justice.
Context: A Mayor Who Has Repeatedly Targeted Israel
Mamdani's remarks are the latest in a pattern of hostile rhetoric toward Israel from City Hall since he took office, and his own admission that New York lacks any legal mechanism to act on the Hague's warrant shows that the statement functioned as political theater rather than a policy position with any real consequence. For a Jewish community in New York already navigating a mayor openly hostile to Israel, Eisenkot's blunt rebuttal, delivered from Jerusalem by one of the most respected military figures in Israeli public life, will likely resonate as a rare instance of the moral record being set straight in real time, on the record, without hedging.
