Israel's president used an exclusive interview to accuse New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani of spreading antisemitic hate, while crediting President Trump with reshaping the Middle East and warning that Iran's ideology threatens the entire free world.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, speaking from his Jerusalem residence in an interview with Fox News Digital published July 31, did not hold back about the New York mayor who posted a social media video on July 21 calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a war criminal" and "the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people." Herzog rejected Mamdani's characterizations outright and warned that the mayor's conduct endangers the very New Yorkers he was elected to serve.
The interview landed at a pivotal moment. Hours after Herzog sat down with Fox News Digital, Trump announced that Hamas had agreed to a roadmap that includes the militant group's disarmament, the next phase of a broader plan Herzog said the United Nations Security Council had already approved. Netanyahu, meanwhile, had traveled to Washington earlier in the week to meet with Trump and attend a memorial service for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Herzog's sharpest language was reserved for Mamdani. The Israeli president said the mayor "does not respect my nation's right for self-determination" and accused him of denying the Jewish people's inherent right to nationhood.
Herzog told Fox News Digital:
"Mamdani does not respect my nation's right for self-determination... the Jewish people's inherent right to have a nation of their own. And he's basically spreading blasphemy, hate, antisemitic rhetoric. He should understand that he's risking his own citizens, he's risking their safety, well-being and life."
He added that Mamdani's conduct "cannot be accepted in New York, which is a city which is dear to our heart, dear to the Israelis, and dear to me personally." And he framed the stakes in terms of permanence versus passing politics.
"I think New York will continue way after Mamdani. And I hope he won't create an irreversible damage."
Mamdani's July 21 video post, in which he labeled Netanyahu a war criminal and accused Israel of genocide, drew the kind of language that would have been unthinkable from a New York City mayor a generation ago. Herzog did not treat it as a policy disagreement. He treated it as a threat to civic safety and to the relationship between two cities bound by deep historical ties.
On Iran, Herzog was equally direct. The joint U.S.-Israel military campaign, dubbed Operation Epic Fury by the Trump administration and Operation Roaring Lion by Israel, launched on February 28 and ended with a Trump-announced ceasefire on April 7. But Herzog made clear that the threat from Tehran extends well beyond any single military operation.
He pointed to Iran's pattern of funneling resources away from its own people and into global terror networks:
"They take their people's food and money and spend it on terror all over the world. It's a given fact."
And he traced the problem to ideology, not just geopolitics.
"You ask yourself why a nation of this nature wants to have so much terror activity around the world, and that is because of ideology... The ideology does not accommodate any other religion or moderate Islam, for that matter. That is why it is so dangerous."
Iran's leadership itself shifted during this period. Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei was appointed Iran's supreme leader on March 9, replacing his father, a succession that did nothing to soften the regime's posture. Herzog referenced Iranian threats around the Strait of Hormuz as further evidence of Tehran's destabilizing ambitions.
Herzog offered an expansive accounting of Trump's record on Israel, one that stretched across both terms. During his first term, Trump relocated the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 and subsequently recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. In his current term, Trump launched the joint military campaign against Iran, helped secure the return of 255 hostages held by Hamas after the October 7, 2023, attack, and pushed a 20-point plan through the UN Security Council.
Herzog acknowledged the efforts of many officials involved in the hostage returns but credited Trump's leadership specifically. And he described the broader relationship between the two nations in terms that went beyond diplomacy.
"I believe that there is something biblical and prophetic in the way our nations work together. And I truly believe that Israel should be a bipartisan issue of friendship and support."
That line, "bipartisan", carried weight given the context. The FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act, a $1.15 trillion annual defense policy bill, passed the House largely along party lines with only six Democratic votes. Support for Israel's security needs is becoming a partisan question in Washington, and Herzog clearly wanted to push back against that trend.
He described the shared foundation of the alliance in moral terms:
"We both drink from this set of values which was commanded to all of us by these historic spiritual books given to us by the Almighty."
The interview took place just hours before Trump's announcement that Hamas had agreed to a disarmament roadmap. Herzog framed the development as a potential breakthrough but kept his language measured.
"This is something that can be a major breakthrough if it happens. Let's remember, the 20-point plan of President Trump was approved by the [United Nations] Security Council, and the next phase is disarming of Hamas."
He drew a hard line on what any future arrangement in Gaza must look like: Hamas cannot remain in control and cannot use the territory as a base for further attacks. "Hamas cannot control Gaza and cannot turn it into a launching pad for terror and hate anymore," he said.
But he also struck a note of concern for ordinary Gazans, saying "the people of Gaza deserve a better life" and pointing to what he described as a real, budgeted plan for changing the territory's future course.
Herzog reserved some of his most pointed remarks for Karim Khan, the now-dismissed chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court who issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. ICC member states voted to remove Khan over sexual misconduct allegations, a sequence Herzog said was no coincidence.
He described a timeline in which Khan's staff had been preparing to engage with Israeli officials, and then Khan abruptly issued the warrants instead:
"Everybody got ready to talk to him and present the real story and the real truth. His staff were on their way to the airport and all of a sudden he issued these orders and writs against Prime Minister Netanyahu, [then] Defense Minister [Yoav] Gallant and others. And only in hindsight now we know clearly that it was in order to divert attention from the sexual allegations."
Herzog called for the case to be dropped entirely. "The ICC should... not fall into the trap of hate and lies that Karim Khan presented simply to cover for himself," he said. Khan's lawyers have responded that they "will challenge the lawfulness and fairness of the decision through all available legal mechanisms."
The accusation is significant: an Israeli head of state publicly alleging that the ICC's most consequential recent prosecution was motivated not by evidence but by personal self-preservation. Whether or not the ICC acts on that framing, it undercuts whatever legitimacy the warrants still carry.
Netanyahu's trip to Washington included attending the memorial service for Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Herzog used the interview to pay tribute. He praised Graham as someone who "understood world affairs like no one else" and grasped Israel's role in defending Western values.
"[Graham] knew how to fight empires and nations of evil, and to stand up to them without fear. I will always remember him, Israel will always remember him. The Jewish people will always cherish his memory."
Graham had been a vocal advocate for Israel throughout his Senate career. His death, the details of which were not discussed in the interview, clearly left a mark on Israeli leadership.
Herzog also addressed the status of Christian communities in Israel, a subject that matters to millions of American evangelicals who view the country's religious landscape as a bellwether. Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics reported that the Christian population stood at approximately 184,200 as of December 2025, about 1.9% of the total population, growing 0.7% over the previous year.
Herzog described active engagement with Christian leaders at every level. "I myself met the Pope and spoke to him several times and went to the Holy See. I speak to all the heads of churches. I recently had the Greek Orthodox Patriarch and this morning the Cardinal of Jerusalem," he said.
He acknowledged past tensions but said his government was addressing them aggressively, reporting "a major reduction in moments of friction." And he pointed to a broader regional problem, a movement to push out Christian communities "especially in some of the Muslim world, in Palestinian communities and elsewhere."
"I'm here for any Christian community that needs support of any kind. People know it. And I speak to their leaders all the time."
A delegation of 1,000 evangelical Christian pastors and influencers, organized through the Friends of Zion Ambassador Program, recently visited Israel and met with former Hamas captives at the site of the Supernova music festival, a visit that underscored the deep bond between Israel and American evangelicals.
Throughout the interview, Herzog returned to a theme that clearly preoccupied him, the gap between Israel's image on social media and the reality on the ground. He acknowledged the criticism, the campus campaigns, and what he called "huge money which was funneled to attack Israel." He also conceded awareness of Israel's own mistakes, without specifying them.
But his core appeal was personal and direct:
"It's very easy to smear Israel on TikTok, but that doesn't say the real truth. And I invite every young American to set foot in this country."
He recalled his own reception in Washington three years earlier, when he addressed a joint session of Congress marking 75 years of Israeli independence and received what he described as "almost 30 standing ovations." That bipartisan warmth has eroded. Herzog did not pretend otherwise.
"We're a nation seeking peace, we're a nation seeking innovation, we are a nation bringing ideas which will save humanity, and we are [a] nation trying to do good. And I hope and pray that we will have peace with our neighbors in the entire region, with our Palestinian neighbors as well. But that requires that Israel will be accepted and people will understand that we have security needs."
When a nation's president has to explain to an American audience that his country has a right to exist and a right to defend itself, the problem is not with Israel. It is with the people, Mamdani chief among them, who have made that basic proposition controversial.
