Published by an old curmudgeon who came to America in 1936 as a refugee from Nazi Germany and proudly served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He is a former law enforcement officer and a retired professor of criminal justice who, in 1970, founded the Texas Narcotic Officers Association. BarkGrowlBite refuses to be politically correct.
(Copyrighted articles are reproduced in accordance with the copyright laws of the U.S. Code, Title 17, Section 107.)
Transit workers and riders are constantly in fear of being assaulted by crazies on the subway.
New York has become Dodge City, because of laws without consequences and judges who practice revolving-door-justice.
Don’t believe me? Read The Post any day of the week and you’ll find
stories about brazen daylight shootings, jewelry store smash-and-grabs,
shameless shoplifting and tales of serial offenders wreaking mayhem
across the five boroughs.
It’s particularly personal for me given my close encounter with a
homeless emotionally disturbed person on an 6 train in The Bronx early
this year.
Readers may recall my wife and I encountered a young, disheveled and
barefoot man standing over and threatening an older rider with a blade.
The man, later identified by police as Johnathan Gonzalez,
threatened to cut the other passenger’s throat, dared anyone to stop
him and ranted about getting “three squares a day” on Rikers.
I distracted him long enough for the other guy to get away. After
getting off the train at the Parkchester station, I called 911 and NYPD
cops caught up to him a few station stops later.
Subways in chaos
Gonzalez was arrested, sent to a local hospital for evaluation and
later charged with menacing by The Bronx District Attorney’s Office.
The case is still open. Gonzalez failed to show up for his March
court date and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Since then, he has
been arrested seven or eight times on petit larceny shoplifting charges
on the Upper East Side — yet still isn’t being held.
Mayor Eric Adams proposed ways to reduce subway crimes, but the violence continues.
Since shoplifting isn’t a bail-eligible crime, Gonzalez can’t be
remanded. And for some reason, Manhattan judges appear reluctant to hold
him on the Bronx warrant — likely only urging him to return to the
Bronx court.
It’s maddening. Gonzalez most likely suffers from a mental illness.
He’s obviously not getting the help he so clearly needs. Yet Manhattan
judges believe that he’s capable of making his court dates.
The whole catch-and-release approach to recidivist shoplifters in
Manhattan is disheartening and undermines public confidence in our court
system.
I’m an inveterate subway rider. I refuse to be deterred from my daily
commute because we can’t cede ground to crime and disorder.
On a recent morning commute, I avoided a subway car where a
muttering, shoeless vagrant was seated in the corner. And in the car
where I settled down, I spotted a homeless man covered with a white
bedsheet lying asleep across one of the train car’s benches.
I looked out of the car at the MTA subway cleaners before realizing that there was little that they could do — or should do.
At the same station last month, their co-worker Anthony Nelson was hospitalized with a broken collarbone,
dislocated nose and other injuries after trying to stop another
demented homeless serial arrestee (42 arrests at last count) from
harassing straphangers.
MTA worker Anthony Nelson was attacked by Alexander Wright.
That suspect, Alexander Wright,
one of several revolving-door-justice poster boys, sits in Rikers
awaiting trial for this latest assault. Nelson’s family and the
Transport Workers Union have rallied around him in urging that his
attacker be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Meanwhile, the MTA is looking to ask the court to ban Wright from the
subway system for three years. And those who assault transit workers
and menace commuters need to understand that criminal behavior has
consequences.
Those persons shown to suffer from severe mental illness need to be
held accountable and, from a humanitarian perspective, they need
mental-health treatment in an appropriate setting given their crimes.
Alexander Wright is a repeat offender, with a dangerous past of harming others.
The EDP situation on the subway continues to be real and dangerous. I was fortunate not to have suffered Mr. Nelson’s fate.
The pattern of “catch, release, and repeat” for individuals like
Johnathan Gonzalez puts public safety at risk and does nothing to
provide them the necessary care.
Mayor Adams definitely doesn’t have the subway situation under control.
He needs Albany lawmakers and judges to cooperate with his effort to
make the transit system safer.
Two months to go until Israel’s next election (the fifth election in the past three years), and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu is feeling hopeful as the electorate shifts even further to the Right.
Prior to the April 2019 election (the first in this present series of
elections), 46 percent of Israeli voters identified as right-wing.
Today, that number has grown to 62 percent.
That according to the latest survey by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI).
The growth of the Right has come at the expense of both the Center
and the Left, which have dropped by nine and six percentage points,
respectively, during the same period.
While on the surface this looks to be good news for Netanyahu and his Likud Party, things aren’t so simple.
In all the last four elections, the various parties that make up the ideological Right have won a clear overall majority
in the Knesset. But because several of those parties refuse to sit in a
government headed by Netanyahu, his efforts to forge a stable
right-wing government have been repeatedly thwarted.
The same is expected following the upcoming vote on November 1,
unless Bibi can convince one or more of those parties to change course,
or if his Likud wins far more seats than predicted.
Arab apathy
Arab voter turnout on November 1 is expected to drop to an all-time
low of 39 percent amid voter fatigue and growing disillusionment with
Arab political parties.
This would have the effect of amplifying the Jewish vote, which as the IDI survey showed strongly prefers the right-wing bloc.
A democratic anomaly
Israel is something of an anomaly among Western democracies. While
much of Europe and North America are seeing leftward, progressive
trends, Israel is becoming increasingly right-wing and conservative.
That’s not to say there isn’t a large left-wing liberal movement in
Israel. There is, but it is undoubtedly a minority in terms of voting
power.
In broad strokes, this can be seen as a result of Israel acting as a
melting pot for Jews from disparate backgrounds (a majority of them
Middle Eastern), and the Jewish state’s geographical position between
the liberal West and the conservative East.
Tucker Carlson left SPEECHLESS when he hears latest stats about Miami's crime rate
'There's no lying about how many murders you have'
By Dave Rubin
Blaze media
August 29, 2022
Tucker Carlson and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez (R)
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez joined Fox News' Tucker Carlson to share
the amazing success story of his city, which has achieved a multi-decade
low in murders, and is currently on track for the lowest crime rate
since the 1930s.
"What exactly are you doing in Miami that
America's other cities are not doing?" Tucker asked, noting that many of
America's cities seem to be "falling apart" after a nearly three-year nationwide push by progressive Democrats to "defund the police."
"We actually increased funding
for police," Suarez explained. "So we have the most police officers
we've ever had in our history. We've also lowered taxes to the lowest
level in recorded history, which has prompted tremendous growth. We grew
12%. I think that's the second most in recorded history as well. We
have 1.4% unemployment.
"We're the happiest city in America and
the healthiest city in America," he continued. "So, it turns out if
people are healthy, they're happy, they're working, they're not paying a
lot of taxes, and they see an increased police presence, they don't
have a tendency to commit murder. So, that's been the Miami miracle
story, which is a huge contrast to the Washington nightmare story."
"Incredible," remarked Tucker. "Murders are the one thing that's pretty
easy to measure ... there's no lying about how many murders you have.
That's why it's just an amazing story."
Israel had carried out “countless operations” in Iran’s heartland, former Mossad head Yossi Cohen said on Monday.
“During my term as Mossad director, countless operations were conducted against Iran’s nuclear program,” he said at an event marking the 125th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland.
He added the Mossad “had many successes in the fight against Iran’s nuclear program.”
“We operated around the world and on Iranian soil itself, in the very heartland of the ayatollahs.”
Israel Air Force F-16 fighter jets and a refueling plane fly in formation
According to Cohen, the Islamic Republic was “lying to the whole world” about its nuclear program.
“The Iranian regime is lying to the whole world and we proved it when
we brought thousands of documents from the Iranian archives, documents
that proved that the Iranians lied to the IAEA,” he said, referring to
the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
“This regime calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and
wiping it off of the map. We can never allow a regime that calls for our
destruction to get its finger on the nuclear trigger,” he said.
“Iran seeks to circle Israel from all sides, from Gaza in the south
to Lebanon and Syria in the north. It funds, trains and arms terrorist
groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, enabling them to shoot
thousands of rockets at Israel’s civilian population,” Cohen said.
“This fanatical regime must never obtain the ability to accelerate
its weapon of mass destruction that would be used against the Jewish
state,” he added.
Current Mossad director David Barnea said in recent days the nascent nuclear deal is a “strategic disaster” that is “based on lies.”
“The agreement is a bad deal that gives Iran a license to manufacture a bomb,” Barnea was quoted by Hebrew media as saying.
Echoing earlier comments made Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Barnea said Israel has no obligation to be party to the agreement.
“The Mossad is committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons. The agreement does not apply to Israel, nor does the freedom of
action to continue operating,” he said.
Lapid on Sunday said both the Israeli military and the Mossad are on standby and “ready for any scenario.”
“We will be prepared to act militarily to preserve Israel’s security.
The Americans understand this, the world understands this, and Israeli
society should also know it,” Lapid said.
So,
how many more FBI agents do you think are out there who viewed it as
their personal mission in life to protect the country by doing
everything they could, legal or not, to ensure that Donald Trump was not
reelected? A very few? A fair number? A whole lot?
EDITOR'S ANSWER: Hogwash! The correct answer is fewer than a very few.
Women can safely and effectively self-induce abortion using misoprostol after receiving information from a healthcare provider
AB 2223 is sitting on the desk
of the God-Emperor of California to see if it will become law. The
proposal, by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, if signed into law
would totally shield pregnant women (and presumably pregnant men too)
from civil or criminal liability for a self-induced abortion,
miscarriage or stillbirth. It also protects anybody who aides or abends
the pregnancy termination even if that action is otherwise illegal.
It does not decriminalize the murder of babies once they are actually born. Probably. Maybe.
It is not clear at this time if Goofy Gavin is going to bite on this one or not.
Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most influential political figures of the 20th Century
Mikhail Gorbachev - the last leader of the USSR and the man
despised by Vladimir Putin and Russian nationalists for ending the Cold
War and failing to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union - has died
at the age of 91, Russian news agencies cited hospital officials as
saying.
The Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow said that the former
Soviet leader died 'after a serious and long illness', according to the
Interfax, TASS and RIA Novosti news agencies. Gorbachev had been
suffering from long term kidney problems and was on dialysis - and was
confined to a clinic during the pandemic.
The USSR's last president
forged a series of arms reduction deals with the United States and
partnerships with Western powers including Britain to remove the Iron
Curtain that had divided the European continent since the Second World
War - and to bring about the reunification of Germany.
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev relax at Reagan's California ranch on May 2, 1992
Police believe three shooting in southwest Houston were committed by the same individual
Some of the victims killed by offenders who were out on
multiple bonds in Harris County. Crime Stoppers of Houston said
156 people have been killed since 2018 by people released on multiple
bonds in Harris County
Harris County Crime Statistics (2022)
Auto theft10,166
Auto break-Ins27, 245
Burglary of homes4,486
Aggravated Assaults88,866
Kidnappings78
Robberies4,597
Sexual assaults487
273Murders
Murder rate greater than Chicago
135,000untriedcriminal cases
Over60,000pending felony cases
Over450 untried capitol murders
54,000 newcriminal cases in 2022 (8 mos.)
182 murders committed by criminals out on multiple bonds
Repeat offenders 2016 out on bond -33COMPARE to979violent felons out on bond in 2021
25,000 suspects - 12 officers investigatingin Harris County Sheriff’s office
Philly PD Is Hemorrhaging Officers, and It's About to Get Worse
With
the Philadelphia Police Department already l,300 officers short of its
target staffing level, over 800 officers and civilian employees are set
to retire in the next four years, and recruiting can't keep up.
By Anna Orso and Ryan W. Briggs
The Philadelphia Inquirer
August 19, 2022
A gunman opens fire on a Philadelphia cop
The Philadelphia Police Department has faced a critical shortage of
officers for months — one that's all but certain to get worse as
hundreds more cops plan to leave.
With the police force already
operating about 20% below its target staffing level, more than 800
officers and civilian employees have set retirement dates within the
next four years by enrolling in the city's deferred pension program.
The decades-old program helps officials prepare for the departure of
longtime employees by allowing city workers to begin collecting on
pension benefits four years before they retire. Fresh pension records
analyzed by The Inquirer show the number of Police Department enrollees
doubled in four years.
The figures mean officers are leaving
faster than the department can recruit them. The force is virtually
guaranteed to see about 200 retirements for each of the next four years.
But this year, just 120 cadets will be eligible to graduate from the
police academy.
The wave of impending retirements comes atop
nearly 600 existing officer vacancies, soaring resignations, and
hundreds of injury claims that have taken more cops off active duty. All
told, the force is already some 1,300 officers short of its full
complement of 6,380.
The growing officer shortage within one of
the nation's largest police forces is colliding with the highest rates
of gun violence Philadelphia has seen in generations. Last year, there
were 562 homicides, the most in recorded history — and so far this year,
the pace has not slowed.
Police Commissioner Danielle
Outlaw invoked the staffing crisis following a West
Philadelphia shooting that on Tuesday night left five young men wounded
and 100 shell casings outside a recreation center.
Outlaw said adequate staffing allows police to have a more "visible presence."
"We
will never, ever be able to truly quantify how much violence would
never occur," she said, "if prospective offenders see police in the area
before they act."
The officer exodus coincided with both a
political shift around policing and a broader trend of municipal workers
leaving their jobs in droves. Outlaw has said for months that morale
among officers is low, which she has attributed in part to politics and
increased scrutiny.
Ranks have dwindled in almost every unit, and
the effects are noticeable. Police response times have slowed since
2020. Some officers were redeployed to boost patrol strength.
Officials
admit recruitment has faltered, blaming both the city's uniquely
stringent hiring requirements and a nationwide shortage that has made
the market for recruits more competitive.
They emphasize that the
problem isn't unique to Philadelphia. Police departments across the
country have faced severe challenges recruiting officers, with some
offering massive signing bonuses or retention pay.
"It's been very
difficult across the country to have people wanting to get into
policing and law enforcement," Mayor Jim Kenney said during a recent
news conference. "I can't force people to become police officers."
A department hemorrhaging cops
While
agencies across city government have buckled under persistent
short-staffing over the last year, police in Philadelphia are leaving
more quickly than other municipal workers. They also make up a
disproportionate amount of expected retirees, according to city
employment records.
As of July, 809 Police Department employees
were enrolled in the city's Deferred Retirement Option Plan, known as
DROP. While uniformed police and civilian staff account for about a
quarter of the city workforce, they make up more than 40% of the workers
enrolled in DROP.
The full number of department retirees in the
coming years will likely be even higher, because not all Police
Department retirees enroll in DROP — over the past three years, more
than a third did not.
In all, the department is likely to see more than double the 100 annual retirements averaged before the pandemic.
In
addition to those retiring, some officers will inevitably quit. And
resignations similarly surged last year: According to the department,
128 officers quit in 2021, more than twice the year prior.
While
resignations across the municipal government as a whole slowed this
year, the same cannot be said for the Police Department. Eighty-seven
officers have already resigned this year, meaning the department is on
track for more resignations than 2021.
Atop it all, injury claims
are keeping hundreds of paid officers out of work — a trend driven, in
part, by some exploiting disability programs. Today, about 580 police
officers report being too injured to work, and another 110 are on
"limited duty."
Aaron Chalfin, an associate professor of
criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, said shortages have a
real effect on crime.
He said research shows lower police staffing
is linked to increases in both violent and property crime. Experts
believe that's because when more officers are in an area, they're making
more arrests, and their mere presence deters crime.
"It doesn't
mean every city and every year there will be an impact," Chalfin said.
"But at a 30,000-foot view of it, murder is responsive to the number of
police officers. Overall violent crime is responsive. Property crime is
responsive."
Others see the shortage as an opportunity to fill the void with
support systems outside law enforcement to curb those same problems.
The
city's police budget grew by about $30 million this year, with some
money earmarked for recruitment. But Kris Henderson, executive director
of the Amistad Law Project, advocated for using the reduction of the
force to reinvest some of those funds in quality-of-life services, job
programs, and community-based violence intervention.
"People in a
few neighborhoods of the city are really hurting, really need something
holistic," Henderson said, "and it's frustrating that the only thing
that's really being given is more money for cops."
Why hiring is not keeping pace
Recruiting officers was a struggle even before the pandemic.
Some
police brass recall days when academy classes had more than 100
recruits each. But even in 2019, four different classes saw an average
of just 57 cadets.
Then, hiring virtually ground to a halt during
the pandemic. Today, according to police data, there are 160 cadets in
the academy who will be eligible to become new officers within the next
year. But they are hardly enough to dent 600 existing vacancies — let
alone the hundreds more anticipated.
The slow hiring can be chalked up to a handful of social and regulatory factors.
Across
the nation, departures from police departments accelerated dramatically
in 2021, creating an overwhelming demand for officers.
At
home, Philadelphia's transit police have also struggled to staff up,
while in other Pa. cities, like Pittsburgh, police staffing has reached
critical levels. The Los Angeles Police Department has 650 fewer
officers than before the pandemic, and officials from Seattle,
to Phoenix, to Atlanta all say they're similarly scrambling to hire
cops.
But some argue local policies have exacerbated the staff shortages in the Philadelphia Police Department.
The
city's residency requirement has been a major barrier to hiring,
department leaders have said. In 2020, City Council passed a law
requiring applicants live in the city for a year before
applying. Philadelphia is the only large American city with such a rule.
During a spring City Council hearing, police leaders said after the rule took effect in 2021, applications dropped by 30%.
In
April, the Kenney administration waived the pre-residency requirement
for police officers. But it contributed to a deficit the department has
not recovered from.
Additionally, the vast majority of applicants fail to pass a battery of screening programs.
The department said last year, for example, it invited nearly 3,800 applicants to attend spring orientation.
Just
900 showed up. Upwards of 500 failed the reading test or agility test.
More were eliminated following drug tests, background checks, and a
psychological evaluation.
The department ultimately offered jobs to 65 people. Forty-eight started training at the academy.
Just 41 graduated.
'I'm very concerned'
Kenney
said the Police Department, which has a nearly $800 million budget, is
recruiting on campuses and at job fairs but "it's difficult to get
people to want to be in public service."
The city is trying
several tactics to widen the pool. The department slightly reduced the
age to apply from 21 to 20, a change that follows reductions to age and
education requirements made in 2017.
The department also partnered
with local colleges and the YMCA to prepare recruits for the reading
and agility tests. In June, City Council allocated an additional
$250,000 for recruitment.
But with gun violence still at historic
highs, the police shortage is likely to be a sticky issue — just as the
campaign for Philadelphia's next mayor heats up.
Former City
Councilmember Allan Domb, who last week resigned and is considering
running for mayor, led a hearing on police staffing in the spring. He
says the city isn't equipped to fix the shortage on its own and should
hire outside firms to help find cadets, promote the benefits of being a
police officer, and study the department's pay scale.
"I'm very concerned," he said. "You can't improve our public safety if we don't have a police department."
Others
have suggested the city could replace some uniformed officers with
civilians, including at-large City Councilmember Helen Gym, who is also
considered a potential mayoral contender. She has championed policies
like assigning health care providers to respond to people in mental
health crises.
Gym said the "alarming" vacancy rate means police
should civilianize as many functions as possible to free up uniformed
officers.
"The public has made it very clear that the top priority
is focusing on violent crime," she said. "Trained officers are the ones
most suited to be able to do that."
Nikki Haley, a former ambassador of the United States to the UNNikki Haley is the former U S Ambassador to the United Nations. She is
widely considered to be a serious candidate for the President in the
not-too-distant future. Donald Trump likes her.
Letitia James is the Attorney
General for New York State. She hates Donald Trump. She hates anybody
who Donald Trump likes. She ran largely on promises to fuck over Donald
Trump every chance she got. She is a solid leftie.
Letitia James
Haley is suing James. A donor list to her campaign has just been leaked
to the press. The last page of the leaked document is stamped by the
New York State Attorney General's Office. Ms. Haley believes (with some
justification) that this leak is an attempt to pressure people to NOT
donate money to her political future. It will be interesting to see how
this works out.
OK, that is an exaggeration. I admit I didn't know this,
but it seems that for a long time the NYPD has used cops as "plant
managers" to supervise maintenance operations in NYPD buildings.
Effective
immediately the department has moved non-peace officer employees into
these positions and is kicking these people out on the streets in
uniform. I wonder how smoothly that is going to go? Some of these
folks have probably been off the streets for YEARS.
Two Air France pilots have been suspended after they exchanged blows
in the cockpit during a flight from Geneva to Paris in June, an airline
official said Sunday.
The plane had just taken off from the Swiss city when the pilot and
co-pilot got into an argument that led to one of them throwing a punch
and the two grabbing at each other’s collars, Switzerland’s La Tribune
reported.
The cabin crew was forced to intervene, and one member stayed in the
cockpit to babysit the pair for the remainder of the approximately one
hour and 15 minute flight to the French capital.
The plane’s cabin crew were forced to intervene and one member stayed in the cockpit to prevent another fight from breaking out.
The mid-air brawl didn’t affect the rest of the flight, and the plane landed safely, according to an airline rep.
A spokeswoman for the airline also called the behavior of the since-grounded pilots “totally inappropriate,” Bloomberg reported.
The suspension comes amid heightened scrutiny of the Paris-based carrier over safety concerns.
France’s air investigation agency, BEA, released a report last week which concluded that the airline’s pilots have fostered a culture of not following safety procedures by the book.
The report centered on a Dec. 2020 flight from Brazzaville, in the
Republic of Congo, to Paris, when the crew rerouted the plane to Chad
and landed after discovering a fuel leak, but didn’t cut the engine or
land as soon as possible, per leak safety procedures, which could have
resulted in the engine catching fire.
The report cited three similar cases between 2017 and 2022, noting
that pilots seem to be acting based on what they think is the best
versus established safety protocols.
Air France said that it is conducting a safety audit in response to
the report and promised to act in accordance with the agency’s
recommendations.
That includes allowing pilots to study the flights after completing a
journey and designing stricter training manuals when it comes to
following procedures.
Faced with a nuclear deal that hamstrings the
IAEA and massively enriches the Islamic Republic, transforming it into a
nuclear-armed regional power, Jerusalem must now make a choice.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz (L) and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in Washington
As news emerged last week that the United States and Iran are on the
verge of concluding a new nuclear deal, Israelis were given two very
different interpretations of events. Caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz,
along with their media flacks, responded by insisting that although the
deal is bad, Lapid and Gantz are handling it like pros and reducing the
damage in profound ways.
Barak Ravid, their media mouthpiece, reported that as a result of National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata’s meeting with his US counterpart Jake Sullivan,
the administration toughened its positions on the key issues of
International Atomic Energy Agency investigations of three nuclear
installations that Iran did not disclose, and of sanctions against
entities controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. Lapid is
bragging that Israel is satisfied with US responses to Israel’s
concerns.
Gantz traveled to the US on Thursday. He leaked his similar
“satisfaction” with the results of his trip. Ravid reported that Gantz
left his meeting with Sullivan with the sense that the Biden
administration is preparing a military option against Iran’s nuclear
installations. To be sure, Sullivan said nothing of the sort. But Gantz,
all the same, got the feeling that this is the case.
Discordantly, even as the media pumps out the Lapid-Gantz propaganda,
quieter reports have streamed in that Biden hasn’t spoken with Lapid
for more than a month and a half and refuses to take his calls now or
set up a time to meet with him at the UN General Assembly meeting in
September.
Biden hasn’t spoken with Lapid
for more than a month and a half and refuses to take his calls.
More importantly, Mossad Director David Barnea set
off the alarm bells loud and clear in a media briefing on Thursday.
Barnea said the Biden administration has betrayed Israel’s most basic
existential interests with this deal, which he referred to as “a
strategic disaster” for Israel. He explained that the agreement “gives
Iran license to amass the required nuclear material for a bomb,” as well
as the financial means to massively expand its regional aggression
through the likes of Hezbollah, the Assad regime and Palestinian terror
groups supported by Iran in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.
Barnea said the United States “is rushing into an accord that is
ultimately based on lies.” The main lie is Iran’s claim that its nuclear
activities are peaceful in nature—a claim that has been unsustainable
since Israel seized and exposed Iran’s nuclear archive in 2018. Barnea
added that US President Joe Biden believes it is in his
interest to reach a deal, and that Iran, for its part, wants the
hundreds of billions of dollars it is expected to receive after the U.S.
lifts its economic sanctions against Iran as part of the new deal.
Lapid reportedly dressed Barnea down for breaking with the
government’s line. After refusing to walk back his remarks about the
Biden administration, Barnea has been subjected to withering criticism
by Ravid and multiple other government mouthpieces in the media who
received briefings from Lapid. Among other things, Ravid called Barnea
“messianic,” that is, delusional.
The gross disparity between the calming messages Lapid, Gantz and
their media flacks are putting out on the one hand, and Barnea’s
insistence that the approaching agreement is a strategic catastrophe on
the other, is but the latest iteration of a longstanding dispute at the
highest echelons of Israeli leadership over how to understand the
so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (aka the 2015 nuclear
deal), and the challenge it poses for Israel.
The JCPOA was the culmination of the Obama administration’s efforts
to realign the United States away from Israel and its Sunni Arab allies
and towards Iran. Obama’s determination to abandon Israel and the Sunnis
in favor of Iran upended what had been the underlying assumption of
Israel’s military and intelligence leadership since the 1970s. That
assumption was and remains that Israel’s greatest strategic asset isn’t
the IDF, or the Mossad, but the United States.
For nearly 50 years, the guiding concept of Israel’s military and
intelligence chiefs has been that Israel could make what appeared to the
naked eye to be insane strategic concessions, like withdrawing from the
Golan Heights or Judea and Samaria or the Jordan Valley, or canceling
the Lavi fighter jet program, because Israel didn’t need to be able to
defend its borders, or field the best air platform in the world. It
could trust the United States to protect it.
Military leaders like Gantz and all of his predecessors since Ehud Barak
argued that Israel had to make concessions to the Arabs to help America
help Israel. As for the Lavi, Israel has no business building fighter
jets. That’s America’s job. Israel doesn’t need strategic independence
or defensible borders. It needs to keep the US on its side. Because
America, not the IDF, is the guarantor of Israel’s security.
The JCPOA was a profound rebuke to this claim. The deal guaranteed
Iran would become a nuclear-armed state within 15 years at most, with
the UN Security Council’s seal of approval. It also gave Iran the
financial means to massively expand and accelerate its regional and
global aggression.
Israel had two options for contending with the JCPOA. It could
respond rationally, by developing a flexible, self-reliant strategy
based on bold, independent initiatives and the creation of new regional
alliances. Or it could respond irrationally, by doubling down on its
dependence on the United States and lashing out against anyone who
questioned the credibility of US protestations of its “sacrosanct”
commitment to Israel’s security.
From 2009, when then President Barack Obama began flirting with Iran, through May 2021 when then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
was ousted from office, Israel implemented both options. Netanyahu
adopted the rational response, while the security establishment,
including two Mossad directors, Meir Dagan and Tamir Pardo, and three IDF chiefs of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, implemented the irrational one.
With the heads of Mossad and the IDF undercutting him at every turn,
Netanyahu used the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council,
both of which he controlled, to reposition Israel as an independent
regional power. He massively expanded Israel’s relations with states in
Africa, Asia, Latin America and east-central and southern Europe. He
developed personal ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He transformed Israel into an energy power by developing its offshore
natural gas deposits. And beginning with the Arab Spring, Netanyahu
opposed the US-supported ouster of long-serving Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
in 2011, and his replacement by the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012.
Netanyahu supported the Egyptian military’s overthrow of Muslim
Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
These actions earned him the gratitude and respect of the Egyptian
military, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Those
sentiments led to operational partnerships against Hamas and Iran that
later formed the basis of the Abraham Accords.
When Netanyahu finally got an ally as Mossad head with his appointment of Yossi Cohen to replace Pardo in 2016, Cohen and National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat
worked together both operationally and diplomatically to expand
Israel’s regional military and intelligence ties, and carry out strikes
against Iran’s nuclear installations.
For their part, Israel’s generals did their best to discredit and
subvert Netanyahu. From 2010 through 2012, Dagan, Pardo, Ashkenazy and
Gantz all rejected repeated orders from Netanyahu to prepare the
security services to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. In 2010 Dagan
flew to Washington without authorization to tell then CIA chief Leon Panetta
that Netanyahu had ordered the Mossad and the IDF to attack Iran. Pardo
and Gantz similarly refused Netanyahu’s order to prepare to attack Iran
in 2011.
Israel’s military and intelligence leaders also worked to undermine
Netanyahu’s credibility by refusing to stand with him when he waged his
public campaign against the JCPOA in 2014 and 2015. While refusing to
publicly criticize the deal which gave Iran a glide path to a nuclear
arsenal, military and intelligence leaders gave off-camera interviews
applauding the deal. Eisenkot openly embraced the JCPOA after he retired
in 2019.
During Donald Trump’s presidency, Pardo condemned
Netanyahu for revealing that the Mossad had seized Iran’s nuclear
archive, despite the fact that the operation, and its publication, paved
the way for Trump’s abandonment of the JCPOA and implementation of his
“maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which brought the regime to
its knees and dried up its funding for its terror proxies. Gantz and
Ashkenazy opposed the Abraham Accords
and torpedoed Netanyahu’s sovereignty plan in Judea and Samaria. Gantz
refused to fund a project Netanyahu advocated that would significantly
improve Israel’s ability to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.
Last year, with the newly elected Biden having pledged to return the
United States to the JCPOA, and with Netanyahu out of power, Israel’s
dual rational-irrational response to the JCPOA came to an end.
Irrationality won out.
Upon entering office, then prime minister Naftali Bennett,
Lapid and Gantz made the security establishment’s defense of the JCPOA
and its refusal to recognize its strategic implications the basis of
their policymaking. They adopted a policy of silencing criticism of the
administration’s Iran policy, and continuously blaming Netanyahu for
Iran’s nuclear advances. They ignored the fact that all of Iran’s
nuclear advances happened after Biden won the presidential elections in
November 2020, and attributed them instead to Trump’s abandonment of the
JCPOA. Indeed, they claimed Netanyahu’s public opposition to the JCPOA
was the reason Obama signed onto it, and that Netanyahu’s success in
persuading Trump to abandon the deal is the reason Iran is now a nuclear
threshold state.
Bennett, Lapid and Gantz announced a policy of “no surprises” in
relation to Israel’s operations in Iran, giving Biden an effective veto
over all of Israel’s actions—which all but ended shortly thereafter.
Lapid ended Israel’s independent foreign policy and opted to transform
Israel into the State Department’s echo chamber. In so doing, he
destroyed Israel’s relations with Russia, endangering Israel’s
operations in Syria and paving the way for Russia’s decision to upgrade
its ties with Iran.
Whereas Obama’s JCPOA was a looming strategic disaster for Israel,
Biden’s nuclear deal is an imminent existential threat to Israel.
Despite Lapid and Gantz’s calming messages, Barnea’s warnings are
entirely accurate. Even if it is true that Sullivan whispered sweet
nothings in Hulata’s and Gantz’s ears, the fact is that under Biden’s
deal, the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear operations begin expiring next
year, and effectively end in 2025. Biden’s deal leaves Iran’s illicitly
enriched uranium in Iran. It hamstrings the IAEA. And it massively
enriches Iran, transforming it into a regional power, boasting a nuclear
weapons program legitimized by the UN Security Council and guaranteed
by an administration that will remain in power until the nuclear
restrictions end.
So too, as Barnea warned, Biden’s deal with Iran endangers the
Abraham Accords, by compelling the Sunnis to reach accommodations with a
hegemonic Iran, leaving Israel without regional partners.
The rational response to this catastrophic turn of events is to
disengage from the Biden administration, work with the Republicans to
wage a public relations war against the deal, ratchet up Israel’s ties
with the Gulf states, mend fences with Russia and work intensively to
develop and deploy military means to destroy Iran’s nuclear
installations. The irrational response is to fly to America, pretend
that everything is fine, and proclaim, based on a “feeling,” that the
Americans will solve the Iran problem for us.
Relations between India and Israel have flourished for 30 years. What does the future hold for India-Israel relations as India’s role as a great power in the Middle East grows?
India
and Israel on Monday launched a commemorative logo to mark the 30th
anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two
countries.
India
and Israel on Monday launched a commemorative logo to mark the 30th
anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two
countries.
Amb. Dore Gold addressed India’s Manohar Parrikar Institute for
Defense Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) on March 29, 2022. The following
is an edited text of his remarks.Amb. Dore Gold addressed India’s Manohar Parrikar Institute for
Defense Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) on March 29, 2022. The following
is an edited text of his remarks.Amb. Dore Gold addressed India’s Manohar Parrikar Institute for
Defense Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) on March 29, 2022. The following
is an edited text of his remarks.
Amb. Dore Gold addressed India’s Manohar Parrikar Institute for
Defense Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) on March 29, 2022. The following
is an edited text of his remarks.
There is something groundbreaking about appearing at a conference
like this. As a former Israeli senior diplomat, I think today we are
fully engaged in the world system much more than we ever were before,
and that’s a very positive development. It is also a positive
development that our normalization agreements have emerged with Bahrain,
the United Arab Emirates, with Sudan and with Morocco, and this is just
the beginning and I hope it goes much further.
Several months ago, we had a visit to Jerusalem of the foreign
minister of India, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. In the diplomatic protocol
it’s a nice thing to provide some kind of gift which a senior politician
can bring home with him. We have a section of my research institute
which deals in old photographs and we found a photograph of Indian
infantry coming into the gates of Jerusalem in 1917 with General
Allenby, the commander of British forces, reviewing the entrance of
these troops. They were unmistakably Indian; all of them wore turbans
for their headgear.
The photographs shown here remind you of the pivotal Indian role in
what you might call regional stability back at the time of the end of
the First World War. So, I, of course, gave the foreign minister the
photograph of the Indians entering Jerusalem. It made my point, and it
turns out, of course, that India’s role across the Middle East region
was huge. For that reason, I inserted photographs of Indian forces
coming into Jerusalem, Baghdad and Damascus. We often call it the
British Empire, but the role of India in stabilizing Mesopotamia, and in
the agreements that the British viceroy in India had with the
sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf, was critical.
Indian forces marching into Jerusalem, 1917. Field Marshal Allenby reviews the troops.
And the question that arises is, is India going to
return to having a role? Is it going to be the same role? I doubt it,
but it’s something one should be aware of because a role is a reflection
of interests. Today in the Gulf region there’s a very large Indian
community. In the millions. In 2019, there were roughly a million and a
half Indian workers who had migrated to the Gulf, in Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates alone. I’m sure Indian governments feel a sense
of responsibility in protecting their citizens that will influence
Indian policy in the years ahead.
Now it’s no secret that we in Israel have a difficult relationship
with the Iranians, which we did not seek. But if you study the
statements made by the Iranian leadership, you reach the conclusion that
it has an extremely hostile attitude toward the State of Israel and the
Jewish people as a whole. And this requires us to prepare for what Iran
may be doing. Everyone is talking about the Iranian nuclear program and
the role of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). I don’t
think the agreement ever addressed the program adequately.
There is also another side of the Iranian role in our region, which
is Iran’s support for insurgency organizations, largely Shi’ite militias
that have been active across the entire region.
One of the unfortunate consequences of the last JCPOA, from 2015, was
that when sanctions were lifted from Iran, the money that became
suddenly available for the Iranian treasury went to these insurgency
organizations, and it led to an escalation of violence. It generated a
surge in the number of organizations that were challenging the previous
status quo. And of course, we had to deal with Hezbollah, we had to deal
with Hamas, both of which received direct Iranian support.
Indian cavalry entering Damascus, 1918.
Our southern neighbors, the Saudis, had to cope with a
huge escalation by the Houthi forces in Yemen, including missile and
rocket attacks, not on military sites but on civilian sites, including
the center of their capital, Riyadh. So, we have had enormous
instability introduced, beginning in 2015, by Iranian-backed militias.
And any resolution to the conflict in the Arabian Peninsula is going to
have to address that challenge.
Now we do not have diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, but we
understand what they are facing because we face the same thing all the
time in a different form, whether it comes from Hamas or in the past
when it came from Hezbollah, so I’m hoping that our stabilization of the
Middle East region will include an effort to come to some solution to
this challenge that we all face.
Let me just say that this challenge is not just limited to the areas
that border Israel. People often ask how is it that Morocco, which is
off on the Atlantic Coast, became part of the Abraham Accords?
The factual background of Moroccan participation in this alignment in
the Middle East was that the Iranians were directly supporting the
Polisario forces in the Western Sahara through the Iranian Embassy in
Algiers. Therefore, Iran became identified by the Moroccans as a source
of regional instability in North Africa.
Indian forces marching into Baghdad, 1917.
So, these are the regional circumstances that we all
faced and we’re hoping that we can bring about a change in Iranian
behavior, a change in the behavior of these various insurgency
organizations, and with the stability that could result, we are hoping
that we can create a different order for the Middle East.
With respect to India, India was already an emerging great power back
at the time of World War I, even though we still had the shadow of the
British Empire over us. And India’s role is growing as a great power in
the Middle East, in the protection of Indian interests, not in the
protection of Israeli interests or any other interests. So, these are
the facts of what is going on now in our region and there is no way to
avoid the reality of India’s very important role, which we respect. And
we hope that through dialogue we can present each other with what we are
learning about the risks to our vital interests that are becoming
ever-evident in the current situation.
The Middle East has become much more complicated, but that doesn’t
mean that we all have to pull back and not comment on how the region is
evolving. I believe that the Middle East is obviously in some places
very explosive and it requires that we talk about a new world order or a
new regional order. There is a consensus among all of us that certain
behavior of countries is unacceptable and certain behavior of countries
should be promoted.
The problem we have with Iran is not because we want to impose
ourselves on the region. It’s what we hear from our various partners in
normalization. They face the same problem. They face a problem which
might even be worse, because we have a very strong deterrence posture
when Hezbollah operates against us. But other countries don’t
necessarily, and that’s why I think we have to share our impressions.
I opened up a channel to a Saudi think tank in 2015. We met in Rome,
Italy, and I laid out Hezbollah’s strategy to the Saudis. At first, they
didn’t really want to hear about it, but over time they understood that
this could be applied against them through the Houthis in Yemen, and
that’s exactly what happened. So, what I am suggesting is that we have
to draw this fundamental distinction in international diplomacy between
countries that engage in aggression and countries that engage in
defense.
And what we are finding is that the aggressors are still out there,
the aggressors will undermine our stability and our security. If
together we take a common position, we can limit the latitude of the
aggressors to undermine us. That would make a great contribution to
international stability, and I say that as a former ambassador of Israel
to the United Nations.
I mentioned already that when I was engaged in diplomacy with
Moroccans I discovered that Morocco faced a problem of Iranians who were
using their relations with Algeria to undermine the security of the
Moroccan kingdom, through the Western Sahara. Therefore, if we created
this overarching concept of the Abraham Accords, it might help them
because it would make the Iranian initiatives in the Western Sahara
radioactive. That’s what we have to do.
China is a country with which we should have relations because it is a
great power. A number of years ago, I was invited by the Central
Committee of the Communist Party to give a series of lectures in
Beijing, and I quickly understood the gap that was opening between Israel and China.
The delegation I led also went to the Academy of Military Science of
the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, where we spoke. My question at
these meetings was very simple. If we are working hard to improve our
bilateral relations, how come you don’t do anything in return? How is
it, and I said that as a former ambassador to the United Nations, that
you vote consistently for anti-Israel resolutions that have no basis in
fact? And don’t you think you should try and improve that?
Well, the Chinese were not interested, of course, and I saw that we
had a very big problem with them. We also know from our recent history
that the Iranian nuclear program began with the transfer of Chinese
technology to Iran. So, these are fundamental issues and I don’t see how
we resolve them quickly. I think it’s important to again find allies
and know who your allies are, and India is an ally of Israel, and we
will respond to that special relationship in a special manner.
Iran is threatening to “wipe Israel off the map.” This has been
repeated by the highest political echelons in Tehran and by senior
military leaders like the deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami. They put these
statements on billboards which they feature in their military parades.
The billboards are attached to missile carriers, which have
surface-to-surface missiles, like the Shihab-3. According to the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Tehran has been investing in
giving the Shihab-3 the capability to carry a nuclear warhead. In short,
wiping Israel off the map is not just empty Iranian rhetoric; it is an
operational concept.
Just stay strong, use deterrence and try to show
understanding for the ideas of the other side? But I study Iranian
statements. I put a group together in my think tank to study the fatwas
that are coming from Iran with respect to the Jewish people, with
respect to the State of Israel, and we have to understand who we’re
dealing with.
Many of us believe that the Iranian people are ultimately friendly to
the State of Israel and to the Jewish people. We even followed the
doctrines of Shi’ite Islam. We have had very positive relations with
Shi’ites in the past, for example, in southern Lebanon during the
pre-state period. So, I don’t think that we want to paint all Shi’ites
with the same paintbrush as hostile to us. I took an Israeli team a few
years ago to Lucknow, a city with a huge Shi’ite presence, located in
Uttar Pradesh.
These Indian Shi’ites were plainly not hostile to us. We were
welcomed to Lucknow. We were greeted by a Shi’ite general who commanded
Indian forces who were fighting jihadists in Kashmir. So where does the
deep ideological antipathy of Shi’ite Iran to Israel come from? This
hostility comes from Ayatollah Khamenei and his various doctrines which
influenced an elite, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(the IRGC). It presents a challenge to our security, it presents a
challenge to the security of Bahrain, which Tehran has claimed is
Iranian sovereign territory. It is also a problem for the United Arab
Emirates since Iran occupied three of its islands. It has also posed a
problem for Saudi Arabia and many other countries, where pro-Iranian
militias have been active.
INS Vikrant, part of a growing force of carriers that are making the Indian Navy into a blue-water fleet.
There are the beginnings of structural changes to the
world order that should be noted already. On July 14, 2022, the heads of
government of India, Israel, the UAE and the United States formed the
I2U2 group to work together on clean energy and food security. They also
spoke about new initiatives in regional cooperation. These multilateral
bodies are not going to replace the European Union or the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations but they will have a greater role in world
politics and economics in the future.
A few years ago, I had to have eye surgery, and I went to Shaarei
Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem to have that done. My doctor was a
Palestinian Arab from Irbid who had been trained in Jordan. The eye is
the most sensitive part of your body. If you think of where you’re going
to have surgery, do you want to really have your eye operated on by
someone who belongs to a national grouping that might be hostile to you?
Going ahead with the surgery shows the confidence that we really have
developed in each other.
If you go to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem and you go to the
emergency room—and when you come to Israel I’ll take you there
personally—you will see Arab doctors taking care of Jewish patients and
Jewish doctors taking care of Arab patients. In apartheid South Africa
there were separate hospitals for different races. That is not the case
in Israel. Thus, those who use the word “apartheid” against Israel may
be very fashionable at Berkeley, Amherst, or Cambridge, but they are
totally distorting the reality in which we live, and my eyes attest to
that. So, I ask you to study the issue before you make statements about
it.
Transit workers and riders are constantly in fear of being assaulted by crazies on the subway. 
Mayor Eric Adams proposed ways to reduce subway crimes, but the violence continues. 
MTA worker Anthony Nelson was attacked by Alexander Wright.
Alexander Wright is a repeat offender, with a dangerous past of harming others.
Tucker Carlson and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez (R)
Israel Air Force F-16 fighter jets and a refueling plane fly in formation 
Letitia James 
