Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has plastered New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani alongside Iran’s supreme leader, Hezbollah’s chief and Turkey’s president on a massive re-election billboard in Tel Aviv.
The sign, mounted along the Ayalon highway, displays superimposed images of Mamdani, 33, Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “They want Netanyahu to lose,” the billboard reads. “Don’t let them win.” Netanyahu, 76, posted a photo of the billboard on X on Sunday with the message: “Don’t let them win.”
The billboard marks a dramatic pivot from Netanyahu’s 2019 campaign, when his Likud party ran ads showing him shaking hands with then-President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi under the slogan “Netanyahu. Another league.” Seven years later, with Trump so far staying out of Israel’s October election, Netanyahu is running on the hostility of his enemies rather than the friendship of allies.
Mamdani’s inclusion alongside three figures who command armies or terrorist militias is particularly striking. The mayor does not lead a military force or wage war against Israel. His presence on the billboard reflects his emergence as a symbol of progressive anti-Israel politics in the Western mainstream, and his escalating feud with Netanyahu over the Gaza war.
The confrontation between the two leaders has intensified throughout this year. Mamdani campaigned for mayor in 2025 on a promise to arrest Netanyahu if the Israeli leader visited New York for the United Nations General Assembly. In July, he acknowledged in a video posted on X that his administration lacked the legal authority to execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant.
“My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here,” Mamdani said in the July 21 video. “It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant.”
He continued: “The federal government, however, does, and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant. And I want to be equally clear: Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large.”
Netanyahu fired back during a Fox News Channel interview on Sunday, accusing Mamdani of “fomenting hate.” “He’s supposed to be the mayor of all New Yorkers — Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone,” Netanyahu said on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo. “But he’s trying to turn one group against the other.”
The prime minister dismissed the ICC charges as “bogus” and pointed to sexual misconduct allegations against former ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, who was removed from his post on Friday. Netanyahu’s office issued a statement claiming the warrant was “a clear attempt by Khan to divert public attention and seek protection from scrutiny.”
President Donald Trump inserted himself into the dispute on Monday, posting on social media that Netanyahu “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America.” Trump made no direct mention of Mamdani in his post.
In the viral moment that launched their public feud, Mamdani said podcast “The Interview” in mid-July that he was in “an active conversation with our legal department” about whether he could direct the NYPD to arrest Netanyahu. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end,” he said at the time. He added that Netanyahu “belongs in The Hague” and called him “a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court.”
Netanyahu’s Likud party appears to be calculating that Mamdani’s opposition carries more political utility than Trump’s support. An Israel Democracy Institute poll found that Israeli confidence in Trump as a security partner plummeted from 60 percent in March to 28 percent by July, with right-wing voters — Netanyahu’s base — dropping from 70 percent to 35 percent. Mamdani, meanwhile, offers Netanyahu a domestic foil who embodies the progressive movement he portrays as implacably hostile to Israel.
The billboard’s message is explicit: if Israel’s enemies want Netanyahu out, Israelis should want him in. It is a stark contrast to 2019, when Netanyahu asked voters to look at Trump standing beside him. Now he asks them to look at Mamdani, Khamenei, Erdogan and Qassem standing against him.
Israel’s next Knesset election is scheduled for October 27.