New Yorkers driving along Tel Aviv’s Ayalon Highway in search of some distance from the chaos of American politics might be startled to find one of their own staring back at them: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, now recruited into Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli reelection campaign, despite having no power or say in Israel. In a distinctly 2026 piece of political theater, one ideal for social media-fueled speculation, Netanyahu’s Likud party has put Mamdani on a campaign billboard for the elections on October 27, alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem. The Hebrew slogan roughly translates to: "They want Netanyahu to lose.
Don’t let them win." Leave it to Bibi to unofficially enlist foreign characters in his bid to win yet another election. Although politically powerless in the Middle East, the poster bets on Mamdani's usefulness through proxy. Likud's billboard makes a broader bet than asking Israelis to rally around Netanyahu himself or even to reject whichever domestic rival eventually emerges as his main challenger.
The poster instead asks voters to think of a larger cast of antagonists that are easier to vote against. An Israeli may be undecided about Netanyahu or not too enthused about his domestic opponents, but they likely dislike Mamdani, Hezbollah and Erdoğan, a much easier political coalition to assemble. A public feud between Mamdani and Netanyahu has centered largely on the war in Gaza and the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister.
During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani repeatedly said in interviews that Netanyahu should be arrested if he came to New York, and in July 2026, he reiterated that position, calling Netanyahu a "war criminal" and saying he belonged in The Hague. Mamdani later acknowledged that New York City lacked the legal authority to execute the ICC warrant, but urged the U.S. federal government to enforce it if Netanyahu visits for the U.N. General Assembly in September.
In a Fox News interview, Netanyahu responded by accusing Mamdani of "fomenting hate" and of turning New Yorkers against one another, arguing that the mayor was supposed to represent Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Netanyahu also dismissed the ICC's allegations as "bogus" and linked the dispute to broader concerns about antisemitism and weakening bipartisan American support for Israel. The confrontation has since become a political weapon for Netanyahu's Likud party.
The idea is that the people on the billboard carry political baggage that is unattractive to much of the Israeli electorate: Iran and Hezbollah want to destroy the country, Erdoğan has become one of Israel's fiercest critics and Mamdani has made his opposition to Israeli policy basically part and parcel of his public profile. Likud wants poster viewers to recognize a common association: these people want the worst for Israel and they also want Netanyahu to lose. If the people you distrust want Netanyahu to lose, then helping Netanyahu lose can be framed as giving them what they want.
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