Arrests at the UN show where power rests
By Aoife Gallagher · Reporting from Dublin ·
Progressive allies of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani were arrested outside the United Nations as Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly.
The street and the stage On a Thursday in September 2026, the real work of New York happened in the middle of First Avenue while the theater of impunity played out inside the glass tower. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his 15th address to the United Nations General Assembly, treating a near-empty hall to the same defiant grievance that has sustained his six-term tenure, as reported by ABC7 New York and Middle East Eye. Outside, hundreds of protesters blocked traffic on northbound First Avenue at East 39th Street, demanding accountability for a war that has claimed the lives of more than 70,000 Palestinians. Beth Miller of Jewish Voice for Peace noted that over 300 New Yorkers sat in to protest the speech. The NYPD ordered the crowd to disperse and arrested approximately 100 people, handcuffing them and loading them onto buses. This was Occupy Wall Street played out in foreign policy, where the municipal apparatus clears the asphalt so that global power can pass unhindered.
Who sits in the paddy wagon Power in America is measured by who gets put in handcuffs and who gets a motorcade. Among the more than 100 people arrested by the NYPD were figures who represent the insurgent shift in New York politics: Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Democratic congressional primary winner; City Councilmember Chi Ossé; Assemblymember Emily Gallagher; Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America's New York City chapter; actress Susan Sarandon; actor and comedian Caleb Hearon; and former Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning. Assemblywoman Diana Moreno, representing Queens' 36th Assembly District, attended and stated that tax dollars should go to healthcare, schools, and infrastructure at home rather than funding foreign wars. As Gothamist reported, Darializa Avila Chevalier told reporters that you cannot enact a genocide and walk freely through the streets of New York without accountability. These arrests recall the 2020 protests in New York City, where local police forces were deployed to manage dissent and suppress citizens demanding an end to systemic violence. Mayor Zohran Mamdani stayed out of the street action, choosing instead to host Palestinian families from Gaza at Gracie Mansion for dinner and olive tree planting. Yet inside the General Assembly, Netanyahu lashed out directly at the mayor, claiming that Jewish New Yorkers no longer feel safe and accusing Mamdani of trying to silence him. Netanyahu called the mayor's allies antisemitic mobs and declared, "Shame on you for distorting the facts."
The limits of municipal defiance The strongest opposing case for the protesters and Mayor Mamdani argues that local leaders have no business wading into international tribunals or attempting to police foreign heads of state, and that municipal government should stick to paving roads and collecting trash. The argument is built on the reality that New York City lacks the legal authority to execute the International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued against Netanyahu in November 2024 for starvation as a weapon of warfare and crimes against humanity. But this objection misses how sovereignty is practiced in a global city. Just as the 2018 Palestinian protests in New York City and university encampments used local spaces to challenge the impunity of states, Mamdani’s administration has forced a moral reckoning into the municipal square. Mamdani campaigned on a pledge to arrest Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin, correctly pointing out that while the city cannot enforce the ICC warrant, the federal government has the power to do so. The federal government chose instead to grant safe passage to a leader presiding over a military campaign that has killed over 70,000 Palestinians, alongside more than 1,200 Israelis killed in the 2023 Hamas massacre. When the United States denied a visa to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—forcing him to address the General Assembly by video to accuse Israel of state terrorism and ethnic cleansing—it revealed the exact mechanism of American double standards. Washington protects its allies from international law while local police arrest citizens for demanding that the law apply to everyone equally.
History teaches us that small nations and oppressed peoples survive only by insisting on rules that the big capitals would rather ignore. Benjamin Netanyahu can use the United Nations General Assembly to paint his critics as antisemites and dismiss war crimes charges, but he cannot erase the reality of an international arrest warrant or the sight of elected American lawmakers being loaded into police vans for demanding justice. Mayor Mamdani is right to call him a war criminal, and the New Yorkers who took the asphalt on First Avenue are right to demand that accountability begin where empire lands.