Mamdani's call to arrest Netanyahu draws a counteroffer from Israel's UN envoy: arrest Mamdani

…(cont) By the next day the register had softened. Now the mayor was merely too clever for his own good, fanning flames and then acting as if he hadn't — "You cannot set the fire, then say this." And by today the envoy's frame in The Hill is tidier still: the critics are opportunistic politicians, the polling is skewed, the lawmakers are "looking for headlines," because "today it's very easy to get headlines when you attack" Israel.

Here is what a headline was doing on September 16. In Gaza City, an apartment building already wrecked by bombardment came down before dawn and killed at least 21 people, with at least eight children among the dead and dozens trapped under the rubble. Nearly three years of bombardment have left tens of thousands of Palestinians with no choice but to live in an estimated 2,000 buildings in that condition. Common Dreams calls the assault US-backed. That is the wire's word, and it is the only word in this story that tells you whose flag is on the paperwork.

A new film from The Bullet argues the slaughter of civilians there was calculated and intentional — not weather, not accident, a decision with people behind it. That is the claim on the table. And the counterclaim on the table is that a mayor said an impolite thing during UN week.

So count what each man is asking for. One is asking that a government answer for what its army did. The other is asking that a mayor answer for what he said. Either way, the man at the center gets his podium.