New York will shortly again be the annual focus of global diplomacy as world leaders gather here for the United Nations General Assembly. Unfortunately, as occurs every year, much of the focus will not only be on New York’s role as host city but on issues related to Israel.

While Mayor Mamdani’s statements on Israel have drawn much attention, a prior mayor’s tenure offers a powerful paradigm for transcending controversy to pursue mutually beneficial partnerships.

Mamdani repeatedly vowed to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if he came to New York, only to sheepishly acknowledge, in a made-for-social media municipal video, that the city has no legal authority to do so.

This is a striking departure from the way New York mayors have historically approached Israel. They understood that the city’s relationship with Israel was bigger than any one government or political dispute. And when Israel was in crisis, they showed up. A clear exemplar of that tradition was Mayor David N. Dinkins.

When I served as the Jewish liaison at City Hall for Dinkins, New York’s first Black mayor, the city experienced some of its most difficult years in modern history. In the early 1990s, New York confronted racial tensions, painful divisions between communities, and complicated questions surrounding Black-Jewish relations.

Yet throughout those challenges, Mayor Dinkins never questioned the importance of New York’s relationship with Israel.

In 1991 during the First Gulf War, as Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on Israeli........

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