The outlines of a Gaza deal are obvious. But the suffering continues.
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New York Post
21 minutes ago
- New York Post
Nassau County will allow cops to wear face masks for ICE raids, undercover work: ‘We have their back'
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman has carved out a key exemption to the county's controversial mask ban — allowing local cops involved in ICE raids and working undercover to still wear face coverings. The existing law only exempts public mask-wearing for religious or health reasons, but Blakeman's new executive order now gives federal, state and local law-enforcement officers the option to wear masks during operations such as drug and gang raids and soon, immigration enforcement alongside ICE. 5 The existing law only exempts public mask-wearing for religious or health reasons. Brigitte Stelzer 'Here in Nassau County, we respect our law enforcement officers,' Blakeman said at the signing inside the legislative building in Mineola on Friday. 'And we have their back.' The executive order comes as Nassau is gearing up to fully launch its partnership with ICE. Ten detectives have been deputized for the work and are already trained and waiting for the green light. Blakeman said the purpose of the order is to allow cops to mask up during certain police operations 'when deemed necessary' to conceal their identity to 'protect the integrity of their mission' and to limit any possibility of retaliation against them or their families. 5 The executive order comes as Nassau is gearing up to fully launch its partnership with ICE. Brigitte Stelzer The county executive first signed the mask ban into law in August, after the GOP-majority local legislature passed the bill in response to anti-Israel protests across college campuses. The law makes it a misdemeanor crime to wear any face covering unless for religious or health reasons, punishable by a $1,000 fine or up to a year in jail. The law immediately sparked multiple lawsuits that have so far been unsuccessful at shutting it down, with courts citing the existing exemptions written within the legislation as valid. 5 Ten detectives have been deputized for the work and are already trained and waiting for the green light. Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto/Shutterstock Blakeman's executive order is effectively the opposite of a bill proposed Wednesday in neighboring New York City that would prevent any federal agents from wearing masks and other face coverings while on the job. Blakeman said he signed his executive order with the city's bill in mind — wanting to make clear that he will continue to be a partner in ICE's operations in the area despite pushback from the state, the five boroughs and pending lawsuits from civil-rights groups. 5 The law immediately sparked multiple lawsuits that have so far been unsuccessful at shutting it down. Brigitte Stelzer 'I think they're out of their mind,' Blakeman said about the city's proposal. 'I think that they will destroy the city, and I think they will make law enforcement in the metropolitan area, including Nassau County, much more difficult.' The suburb signed an agreement with ICE in February to deputize 10 detectives so they can work federally alongside ICE in helping detain and deport undocumented immigrants. Nassau Democrats slammed Blakeman's partnership with ICE and his executive order as politically motivated and called the carve-out for police an admission of guilt. 5 Blakeman said he signed his executive order with the city's bill in mind — wanting to make clear that he will continue to be a partner in ICE's operations. Brigitte Stelzer 'This executive order is a quiet admission that his original law is most likely illegal,' Nassau County Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton told The Post. 'Democrats warned from Day One that Blakeman's mask ban was vague, over-broad and more focused on politics than public good. 'We proposed a clear, constitutional alternative focused on actual criminal conduct. Instead, the county executive chose a political headline over sound policy, and now he's scrambling to patch the consequences.' Blakeman fired back, 'What I find troubling is the very same people that criticized our mask law are the same people that are saying law enforcement officers in the performance of their duty can't wear a mask to protect their identity if they're involved in a sensitive investigation.' The county executive said the mask ban was never meant to target law enforcement but to deter agitators, who he previously called 'cowards' and claimed were using face coverings to avoid accountability during protests.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
I saw Iran praise an Iowa hero. Can Norman Borlaug's legacy foster peace today?
With President Donald Trump set to visit Iowa tonight, July 3, to launch the year-long celebration of America's 250th birthday, he might be surprised to learn that there is a unique Iowa-Iran connection, one that could provide an unparalleled opportunity to build a lasting peace process in the Middle East. This connection with Iran is based on the legacy of America's greatest agricultural scientist in its 250-year history: Iowa native and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, whose statue in the U.S. Capitol has inscribed on its base "The Man Who Saved a Billion Lives." I learned of this Iowa-Iran connection when serving as chairman of the Borlaug Statue Committee appointed by Gov. Terry Branstad. My role was to lead the process to select the artist to create the statue and raise all of the private funds needed to complete the project. To give an idea about how esteemed Borlaug is in Iowa, I raised all $550,000 in three conversations lasting a total of seven minutes. On March 25, 2014, the exact 100th anniversary of Norman Borlaug's birth on a farm in Howard County near the Minnesota border, his statue (created by Benjamin Victor, the only living artist with four statues in the U.S. Capitol) was unveiled in Statuary Hall. Both Branstad and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, a former governor, gave meaningful remarks, as did Sens. Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin of Iowa. It was one of the greatest days in Iowa history. Three months later I received an email from a university expressing the hope that they could purchase a copy of our statue in the U.S. Capitol to install on their campus. This was not unusual given how Borlaug is held in highest regard around the globe, from Mexico to India (where statues of him already exist) and across the Middle East where his 'Miracle Wheat' saved hundreds of millions from famine, starvation and death in the late 1960s. But, I was stunned that the university involved was the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran (ABRII). Reflecting the fact that Borlaug's wheat had also saved millions of lives in Iran, the Tehran government had presented a gold medal to him in 2000. Now, to commemorate the centennial of Borlaug's birth, ABRII was holding a conference in August of 2014 to honor his legacy. The message concluded with an invitation for me to deliver the keynote address. With a sense of curiosity tempered by considerable trepidation, I accepted their invitation. While the U.S. sanctions on Iran ultimately did not allow ABRII to purchase a copy of our Iowa statue, my wife, Le Son, and I nonetheless arrived in Tehran just past midnight on Aug. 26. Eight hours later, I was on the stage looking out at a standing-room-only auditorium, filled with Iranian scientists and government officials, including the minister of agriculture and a stern-faced mullah representing the Grand Ayotallah, who glared menacingly at me. Considering that no other former senior American official had ever been invited to speak in Iran, I was wondering if I had made a serious mistake in being there. I began by describing Borlaug as part of Iowa's rich legacy of agricultural citizen diplomacy to build relationships with former adversaries, such as: Herbert Hoover taking food to feed children in the Soviet Union at the end of World War I; the Yamanashi Hog Lift, which took Iowa animals to Japan following a devastating typhoon not long after World War II; George Washington Carver's advice to Mahatma Gandhi during India's struggle to throw off British colonial rule; and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's visit to an Iowa farm in 1959 at the height of the Cold War. I said that I was continuing this approach of peace through agriculture that underscored Borlaug's life, through the World Food Prize he had founded and I was now leading. In making that point, I showed a slide of Daniel Hillel, the Israeli irrigation pioneer receiving the World Food Prize in 2012 in Des Moines with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon joining in making the presentation. More: Iowa 'Citizen Diplomacy' can promote peace through agriculture in Africa I noted that Hillel, a Jew, had been nominated by three Muslim scientists, and that in the audience among the people from 70 countries who were standing and applauding him were the daughter of King Hussein of Jordan, an Arab sheikh from Qatar, and an Israeli diplomat, who said to me that 'maybe we should hold all of our Middle East negotiations in Iowa.' Stressing to that Iranian audience that our planet is not on course to meet the greatest challenge in human history — whether we can sustainably feed the 10 billion people who will inhabit our planet by the year 2050 — I noted that Borlaug's unfulfilled dream was that wheat rust disease could be eradicated using biotechnology, dramatically increasing the food supply. I invited the Iranian minister of agriculture to send his top scientist working on biotechnology to Des Moines to take part in a special panel on combatting wheat rust disease at our World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue International Symposium in October, which he did. Then, I recalled the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, I said I'd heard Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel say that people who can stand and sing or cheer together can live in peace together. I painted a verbal picture of two scientists — one from Iran and one from the United States — who, having fulfilled Borlaug's dream of eradicating wheat rust disease through biotechnology, were walking into the Iowa State Capitol together to receive the World Food Prize, just as Daniel Hillel had done. I concluded saying that 'we could then all stand together and cheer together for this great Iranian-American achievement, and live in peace together.' I stepped back from the podium uncertain of and unprepared for the reaction that followed. Led by the minister and the mullah, the audience sprang to their feet in unison and gave me a prolonged standing ovation. Many in the audience surged to congratulate me on my remarks as I walked off the stage. The cleric representing the Grand Ayatollah was particularly animated, almost running to congratulate me, and effusively pumping my hand while praising my statement. Norman Borlaug is perhaps the only individual on our planet who is revered in Tehran and Texas, where Borlaug taught for over 30 years and where his statue stands on the campus of Texas A&M University. More: An 'Iowa Outreach Corps' could, and should, change the world Given the critical importance of bringing a lasting peace to the Middle East, and the extraordinary global agricultural challenge facing our planet, the state of Iowa, the home of the first mosque in America, and Norman Borlaug's legacy with Iran combined provide a unique opportunity for American diplomacy and Iowa citizen diplomacy to successfully address both existential challenges. Wouldn't it be amazing if, five decades after Iowa's greatest hero and America's greatest agricultural scientist received the Nobel Peace Prize, his legacy could inspire an American led process to achieve 'Peace Through Agriculture' between Iran and Israel and across the Middle East, as a capstone to our country's 250th anniversary celebration? We could then commission Benjamin Victor to create another statue of Borlaug to present to Iran to be put up on the ABRII campus. Kenneth Quinn grew up in Dubuque. He served for 32 years as a Foreign Service Officer culminating with his assignment as U.S. ambassador to Cambodia. During that career, he received the State Department Award for Heroism for five life saving rescues he carried out in Vietnam. He was president of the World Food Prize from 2000 to 2020. This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Unique Iowa-Iran connection gives hope for Middle East peace | Opinion
Wall Street Journal
an hour ago
- Wall Street Journal
Palestinian Terrorism, American Funds?
The U.S. press is all over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but there are certain stories for which it has strangely little interest. On Thursday it was the terrorist murder of an Israeli civilian security guard, Shalev Zvuluny, at a supermarket in a West Bank suburb of Jerusalem. The two killers, who stabbed and shot Zvuluny after arriving in a stolen car, were Palestinian Authority police officers. Ramallah pledged to investigate, which is good for a laugh. The Palestinian Authority (PA) glorifies terrorism by its security forces, as is documented in a new study by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israel-based research institute. The PA also subsidizes terrorists, paying them or their families monthly salaries for life. This costs more than $300 million a year, about 8% of the PA budget. The 2018 Taylor Force Act stops direct U.S. economic aid to the PA. But support for the PA Security Forces (PASF) is another matter, the State Department tells us: 'The United States has continued to provide limited assistance to the PASF for the purpose of maintaining stability in the West Bank, apprehending terrorists and militants and supporting related criminal prosecutions, and keeping Israel secure.' On May 1, the Palestinian Media Watch study says, the PA Security Forces honored one of its own, Naji Arrar, when he was released by Israel after serving 18 years for shooting attacks during the Second Intifada. Dressed in a PASF uniform, he was welcomed back to his unit as a hero. The PA's Governor of Ramallah, Laila Ghannam, posed with him for a photo.
