Mamdani Wants Netanyahu to Win
Netanyahu's new billboard names four men who want him to lose. Some of them are better off with him in office.
Driving in Israel is an incredibly stressful experience, and I don’t recommend it. The one exception for me is a night drive on the Ayalon. Little traffic, the city’s lights and skyscrapers, the billboards. During election season, the whole thing gets livelier, and last night it was especially so because the Netanyahu ad I passed had the mayor of New York on it.
The ad displayed four faces: Mojtaba Khamenei, Naim Qassem, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Zohran Mamdani. At the top, it said they want Netanyahu to lose. Below, it told Israelis not to let them win. Netanyahu shared the image himself, writing “Don’t let them win.” The trouble is that some of them would be perfectly happy if he did.
When it comes to Mamdani, the ad has it backward. He wants Netanyahu to win, because a Netanyahu loss would be a blow to his politics.
Set aside for now why the mayor of an American city is pictured with the Supreme Leader of Iran and the Secretary-General of Hezbollah.
In July, Mamdani released a two-minute video announcing that Netanyahu was not welcome in New York. He told the Times his administration was in talks about whether the city could arrest him. A minute and a half in, he conceded what everyone already knew: New York has no independent legal authority to enforce an ICC warrant. He was not going to arrest anyone.
I wrote then that the video instead handed Netanyahu a fight three months before an election he was losing. Whether that was the goal or just a play to his base, he is too calculating not to have seen it coming.
Mamdani’s omission was obvious and yet not at all surprising. Israel was then three months from possibly the most consequential election in its history, with a former chief of staff leading the polls and 61% of Israelis telling the Israel Democracy Institute that Netanyahu should not run again. None of this was secret or in dispute. It was an accepted fact about Israel in July 2026.
One may expect a politician so invested in Palestinian rights to mention that. Israelis who want the Netanyahu government gone: a line to differentiate between the Israeli public and its awful leadership. Mamdani never mentioned it.
Why did he leave it out? Because it doesn’t help his argument. He and his supporters hold that the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir-Smotrich government is what Zionism produces no matter what. For Mamdani et al. this version of Israel is the inevitable result of Israel, not a mistake voters can fix.
This Israeli government is what made his politics work. An Israel with no annexation minister, no Ben Gvir running the prisons with his crocodiles, no prime minister whose survival depends on his most extreme partners leaves him in a different place entirely.
The billboard is still impossible to defend. The mayor of New York was elected by two million people, and many Jews who didn’t vote for him have spent the year saying his view of Israel doesn’t represent their city. He is not Mojtaba Khamenei, and he is not Naim Qassem.
Erdoğan is a similar story. Turkey’s position improves in direct proportion to Israel’s isolation. Just a week and a half ago, the Turkish president stood in Mecca signing a mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia, one of the states that was supposed to be normalizing with us, and Trump welcomed it.
The instinct is to view Netanyahu and Mamdani as bitter rivals, but the events of the last month suggest cooperation. Mamdani’s video helped Netanyahu, and Netanyahu put up a billboard that will make Mamdani more popular.
All the while, Netanyahu can say the world hates the only Jewish state and that he is its chosen protector. Just this weekend, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir went on a freed hostage's podcast to call for killing thirty to forty Gazans a night, mass emigration, and resettling the Strip. Mamdani couldn't ask for more political ammunition.
The irony is that a new government without Netanyahu and his extremists would be good for both Israelis and Palestinians, but worse for Mamdani. He has built a politics that needs Israel to stay exactly as it is.
Neither of them pays a real price. The bill goes to the Jews of New York, the ones at Central Synagogue for Kabbalat Shabbat on Friday when a man came in swinging, and to the Israelis and Palestinians who have suffered tremendously since October 7, in desperate need of this government gone.
I don't understand people who think like you do. The real reason Netanyahu is hated is because he understands the International arena and has accomplished a great deal for Israel. He is an effective leader, notwithstanding the bottomless well of anti-Israel propaganda dollars that have washed over the planet
It's the same reason Trump is hated by the same people.
The red-green alliance is sputtering. Some haven't gotten the message yet. As governments turn right, they will be left nowhere.
Is the Netanyahu government extremist?
Try comparing it to the Palestinians and those who support them.
October 7 proved to the many soft minded Israelis what other others knew all along. Palestinian fanatics who teach their children to die while killing others are not partners for peace.
I want to see Netanyahu win and win big.