New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has resigned his post effective September 16. “It’s now time to move on,” he said.

Bratton is leaving to take a “really good job” as a security consultant with the Teneo firm in the private sector, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday afternoon at a news conference at City Hall.

NYPD Police Chief James P. O’Neill will replace Bratton, whose career in public service has spanned 45 years.

Bratton also served as police commissioner under former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Bratton also served in Boston and Los Angeles, as a police commander in both cities.

Bratton was the keynote speaker at the first National Conference on Personal Security in Jerusalem in May 2014.

“We are fortunate in the United States and Israel to live in the world’s two strongest democracies,” he said at that time. “In a democracy, the first obligation of government is public safety.”

Leaders of the “Black Lives Matter” grassroots organization in the United States are teaming up with pro-Palestinian Authority groups to blame Israel for perceived racial issues in the country.

The trend dates back in part to a simple statement made by Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler, senior minister of the Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington DC, at a Students for Justice in Palestine gathering last November (2015) at the University of Maryland college campus in Baltimore, Maryland.

“The systems of oppression, they’re always very similar to each other,” he said. “They may be tweaked, they may be changed just a little bit, but we find out that the paradign is the same, it looks the same, it feels the same, it is the same.”

Hagler based his point on the concept of intersectionality; the ways various systems intersect and overlap. For his purposes, he described how various systems of oppression folded in various forms of discrimination interwoven between each other.

“We need to respect and honor the dignity of all people,” he told the gathering that day, according to an article by Anna Isaacs published in the March-April 2016 issue of Moment Magazine.

“Sisters and brothers, black lives matter. Palestinian lives matter.”

Pro-Palestinian Authority groups have increasingly been taking advantage of anti-police protests, especial those that turn into violent disturbances, as they sweep across the United States.

This week, they are claiming that “genocide” of African Americans is taking place as the result of the “inhuman treatment and genocide of Palestinians” by Israeli-trained American cops.

The NYU Students for Justice in Palestine organization this week posted an accusation linking Israeli counter-terror training of American police officers with the “genocide of black people in America.” The group said the Israelis are training U.S. police to use “the same murderous and racist tactics used by Israelis against Palestinians,” warning that American cops were being taught by their Israeli counterparts to “oppress” Black Americans.

In a subsequent statement on its Facebook page, the group issued a statement of clarification which, if anything, further reinforced the point.

The statement said, in part:

The IDF assists the NYPD and other American police departments in their oppression and murder of black people. These groups share a common logic that manifests in several types of oppression, white supremacist racism among them. If we in SJP and in the Palestine solidarity movement more generally are serious about ending Israeli oppression then we must stand with black americans. We need to be in the streets with them and we need to organize against police brutality. The Black struggle and the Palestinian struggle are not the same. Still, Palestinian liberation and Black liberation are linked. That is why Palestinians must be there for Black people, and Black People must be there for Palestinians. (sic) This sense of mutual responsibility has been present in our movements.

A group called the ‘Dream Defenders’ meanwhile is among the pro-Arab groups also heavily involved in trying to entangle America’s racial issues with the unrelated chaos in the Middle East. The group, associated with the grassroots Black Lives Matter organization, was founded by three young men.

One of the founders is Ahmad Abuznaid, described by CounterPunch.org by “born in East Jerusalem, Palestine” and who defines himself as a “Palestinian American social justice lawyer.”

Abuznaid, who says he is “all about justice,” moved to the U.S. when he was a year old with his parents, who both received their U.S. citizenship. The family lived in the country until Abuznaid was age seven; at that point they returned to the Palestinian Authority territories for a five-year stint.

New York City police are investigating an anti-Semitic attack against a woman as she driving down a main street in Brooklyn Tuesday afternoon, the New York Daily News reported.

The woman, 38, was wearing a traditional Jewish hair covering and driving with two children in her minivan on Nostrand Avenue near the corner of Avenue J.

The incident, which took place in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, began when two teens started yelling a litany of obscenities with the word “Jew” at the end, said police from the 63rd precinct. The entire string of profanity was not clear, the woman said.

One of the teens hurled a rock at the vehicle, which broke the rear window on the driver’s side. Miraculously the two children were not physically injured.

The incident is under investigation by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.

The worst shooting attack in the history of the United States came after call to Muslims by ISIS official Abu Mohammed al Adnani, urging a “month of hurt” in America and in Europe.

In the wee hours of Sunday, a gunman armed with an assault weapon and a handgun walked into the Pulse Orlando nightclub in downtown Orlando, Florida and shot to death 50 people, wounding 53 more. He held 30 people hostage for at least three more hours until an Orlando police SWAT team finally stormed the building and freed the captives, killing the terrorist in the process.

But the scene for that Florida nightmare was set at least a month earlier, when the spokesperson for Islamic State told the terror group’s supporters in an internet audio recording: “The smallest action you do in the heart of their land is dearer to us than the largest action by us, and more effective and more damaging to them.” The message, released by ISIS on May 21, was translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.

Adnani continued in the statement: “And if one of you wishes and tries hard to reach the Islamic State, then one of us wishes to be in your place to hurt the Crusaders day and night without sleeping, and terrorize them so that the neighbor fears his neighbor.”

In this way, ISIS (also known as Da’esh) is nurturing and building homegrown terror networks around the world, thus encouraging those who live “abroad” to launch attacks locally ‘as their religious duty.’

According to CNN, Adnani is believed to have been the ISIS official tasked with command responsibilities over the attacks that were carried out in Brussels and Paris.

The raised level of intensity in the call for action, however, also signifies the desperation with which the group views its current status in Syria and Iraq. ISIS is beginning to lose ground in those areas due to the gradual gains made by the U.S.-led coalition forces and also by Russian air strikes on their positions in Syria.

New York Police Department officials have raised the alert level in the Big Apple in response to the events that took place over the weekend, as did Los Angeles police, who arrested and took into custody a heavily armed suspect when he appeared to be intent upon targeting a local “gay pride” parade.

A 24-year-old homeless man with a prior record of 16 arrests has been nabbed for slashing an Israeli tourist, 55-year-old Abraham Fekete, at a Greenwich Village subway station last week.

Marvin Tayor is accused of stabbing Fekete in the Bleeker Street No. 6 subway station. He was turned in by a Tipster who called police, according to the NY Daily News.

Fekete, an Orthodox Jew who was in the city visiting friends, had gotten lost in the subway system. He fell asleep on a bench, not realizing how unsafe that can be in a city like New York. Fekete speaks only Yiddish.

He awakened to find Taylor standing over him with a knife, demanding money at 3:30 am Friday, police said. The attacker slashed the visitor from Jerusalem in the face, neck, arms and hands as Fekete fought with Taylor, who then fled with an undetermined amount of cash.

Taylor was taken into custody at around 11:30 pm Sunday night and charged with robbery, assault and criminal possession of a weapon, NYPD sources told the NY Post.

Police caught the stabber on a Nolita subway platform after receiving a call from the Tipster who apparently knows the attacker. Taylor was tracked down and arrested near Fordham University in the Bronx.

The New York Police Department’s top brass — as well as those in the lower echelons — are being questioned by the FBI in a probe that extends all the way to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The investigation developed as the result of two-year-old corruption probe that began with the 20-year head of a union representing NYC corrections officers, and a second individual who retired in 2014 as the police department’s top uniformed official.

The federal agency is now also focusing on two members of the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn who apparently have ties to the mayor, according to local sources. The specific allegations against the two are unclear.

Both allegedly raised a large amount of money for de Blasio’s mayoral election campaign and served on his inaugural committee in 2013. Neither has been charged with a particular crime, according to The New York Times.

In order to put the pieces together, FBI agents have questioned police officials from the very top of the food chain all the way down to a detective in Brooklyn’s 66th precinct, The New York Post reported Tuesday. That precinct is located in the heart of the deeply Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park.

The list of those questioned included police department chiefs, inspectors, captains and other police officials. A union head for top brass said members have been and still are cooperating with the probe. All have been told they are not the targets of this investigation; but if wrongdoing is uncovered, they could face administrative charges or dismissal. In such cases, “wrongdoing” can include acceptance of gifts, free meals or vacations and similar favors.

The investigation is being conducted with prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.

At least police detective has declined so far to answer questions before a federal grand jury that began hearing evidence in the case.

Police Commissioner William J. Bratton told reporters at an unrelated news briefing Tuesday that the unnamed officer has been stripped of his badge and weapon, and placed on modified assignment until the investigation wraps up.

The much-embattled Jewish ritual of using a purchased, donated live chicken as a “kapparah,” or sacrifice with which to absolve one’s sins before Yom Kippur has been given a green light in New York.

The purchased chicken is returned to the organization after completing the prayer and is then ritually slaughtered and donated to the poor for food. In some communities money has replaced the rite where chickens have become unavailable or where politics have made the issue so unpalatable that it community leaders no longer have the energy to cope with the fallout.

State Supreme Court Justice Debra James decided against a petition by The Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos, ruling there was insufficient evidence to prove the ritual a public nuisance, the New York Post reported last week.

The lawsuit was filed this past July and named several rabbis, synagogues, the New York Police Department and New York City as well. It accused the NYC Health Department and the NYPD of aiding and abetting in the ritual by blocking off streets and sidewalks, and not enforcing city and state health and animal cruelty laws.

Various animal rights organizations, including PETA at one point, have annually made the same attempt.

Rabbi Shea Hecht, chairman of the board of the Chabad-Lubavitch-linked National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education (NCFJE), told JewishPress.com in a phone call on Sunday the organization is greatly relieved the judge upheld the ancient custom.

“We are very happy and proud that the Judge held up our Constitutional rights, which are based on freedom of religion, and has allowed us to keep this ancient minhag (custom). Although we recognize that this issue is not over,” he added, “we are thankful to God that we have the opportunity to carry out this important mitzvah to its fullest measure.”

The ritual is carried out as follows:

The live chicken is held above one’s head, and then slowly moved around in three sets of three circles as the petitioner recites a prayer that speaks of the “shadow of death… foolish sinners, afflicted because of their sinful ways and their wrongdoings.”

At no time is it considered permissible to handle the bird roughly, nor is it permissible to torment or upset the bird in any way, which itself is considered the separate sin of tza’ar ba’alei chaim (causing distress to a live creature of God).

The prayer (a brief excerpt follows) goes on to urge repentance, and describe how to expiate one’s sins on the day before Yom Kippur.

“They cry out to the Lord in their distress; He saves them from their afflictions. Redeem him from going down to the grave; I have found expiation [for him]… This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my expiation. This rooster/hen shall go to its death and I shall proceed to a good, long life and peace.”