New Delhi, Sept. 25 -- NEW YORK - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel used a portion of his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday not to talk about the United Nations, or even primarily about Gaza, but to attack the mayor of the city he was standing in.

"Since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York," Netanyahu said, addressing Mayor Zohran Mamdani directly from the podium. "The lies you and other antisemites spread about the Jews and the Jewish state have real consequences," he said, according to a network transcript.

The attack was not new, but the setting gave it weight. Netanyahu is in the middle of a difficult re-election campaign at home, and Mamdani, New York's f...