Jerusalem News (7 March 2017, 9 Adar, 5777)
Contents:
1. Pew: Jews are best-liked religious group in America with Brit-Am Commentary
 on the Change in US Demographics for the worse.
2. My Visit to Sweden Confirms Trump Was Right by Raheem Kassam
3. The Islamic State calls on Muslims to dress like Jews to terrorize and murder them
by Christine Williams
4. The real cost of Russia's Syrian campaign By John C.K. Daly
5. Daniel Pipes: Ignorance of international law is not an excuse!
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1. Pew: Jews are best-liked religious group in America
http://www.jta.org/2017/02/15/news-opinion/united-states/pew-jews-are-best-liked-religious-group-in-america?utm_source=Newsletter+subscribers&utm_campaign=2bd7d2ae06-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_02_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2dce5bc6f8-2bd7d2ae06-28733129
February 15, 2017 10:25am
(JTA) Â Jews are the most warmly regarded religious group in America, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.
The survey, which was released Wednesday, found that Americans generally express more positive feelings toward various religious groups than they did three years ago.
As they did the first time the survey was taken in 2014, Jews topped the survey, in which respondents rank various religious groups on a 'feeling thermometer.' On the scale of 1 to 100, 1 is the coldest and 100 the warmest; 50 means they have neither positive nor negative feelings.
Jews were ranked at 67 degrees, up from 63 in the 2014 survey, followed by Catholics at 66, up from 62, and Mainline Protestants at 65. Evangelical Christians stayed at 61 degrees.
The survey showed a divide between older and younger Americans. While Jews received a 74 from respondents aged 65 and up, the age group's second-highest ranking behind Mainline Protestants, respondents aged 18-29 ranked Jews at 62 and gave their highest ranking to Buddhists at 66.
Religious groups also were rated higher by respondents who knew someone from that religion. Those who knew Jews gave them a 72, and those who do not know any Jews gave them a 58.
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Brit-Am Commentary on the Change in US Demographics for the worse:
The above survey is important and interesting.
It is worth noting however that the results were achieved by playing around with the definitions.
Jews are defined as a monolithic religion i.e. Orthodox, Liberal, reform all together.
So too with Muslims and the rest.
Christians are split up into different groupings e.g. Mormons, Catholics, etc. It Christians were defined as one body they would head the list.
Jews DO NOT head the last among the younger populations. This may be attributed to two main factors:
a. The influence of New Age and feminist type propaganda in the general media and in the educational systems.
b. The lower birthrate of white Christians of mainly Israelite origin. Less babies results in less young people after a few years and later in less adults.
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2. My Visit to Sweden Confirms Trump Was Right
by Raheem Kassam
February 21, 2017
http://www.meforum.org/6553/trump-was-right-to-call-out-sweden
Originally published under the title "What I Saw in Sweden Last Week Is Not 'Normal' and Trump Is Right."
Extracts:
When I got off the train at Malmo's Central station last week and dragged my suitcase noisily over the cobbled pavements I thought to myself, "There's no way this place has 'No Go Zones'."
Downtown Malmo is a gorgeous though freezing cold place to visit in February. I checked into my hotel, Â passing between a "Burger King" and a "Schwarma King" along the way, the latter of which recently took the spot of the "Stortogets Gatukok" in Malmo's Great Square, and set off for my destination: Rosengard.
Much has been written about Sweden's "No Go Zones" in recent years. We've watched them burn over the years with a combination of disbelief and shock. When the Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson told me, Â as we walked through Molenbeek in Brussels just days after the Paris terror attacks in 2015, "we have these places in Sweden too," I was skeptical.
Sweden's liberal migration policies have led to ghettoised communities dependent on state welfare.
As we drove around the housing estates at night, it became clear the problems in these areas: drugs, rape, police assaults and more, were created in large part by state-sponsored "multiculturalism."
Sweden's liberal migration policies, that is to say a failure to maintain any sort of border control at all over the past few decades, have led to ghettoised communities that the state props up with generous welfare payments and socialist lecturing.
Within minutes of exiting a cab outside central Husby, I was surrounded by drug dealers pushing "hashish" and "marijuana." Within a few seconds more we witness two van loads of Swedish police appearing to negotiate one man's arrest from a building guarded by burly men.
"Why are there so many satellite dishes?" I asked one of my guides.
"They don't watch Swedish television. They don't speak Swedish. They want to receive television from their home countries in their native languages."
This, apparently, is the well-integrated paradise that CNN wants you to believe in.
Just a few days before my visit, police officers in the area were punched, kicked, and attacked with glass bottles while on a routine patrol.
President Trump is right to communicate his disbelief about what is happening in Sweden.
... for young women, for police and other emergency services, you take your life into your hands when you enter these areas. And it's not just in Sweden either.
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3. The Islamic State calls on Muslims to dress like Jews to terrorize and murder them
by Christine Williams
jihad Watch, March 01, 2017
http://unitycoalitionforisrael.org/?p=15700349?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=nl_open&utm_medium=email
Extracts:
.... In a chilling taped threat to Jews in December 2015, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi threatened Israel:
You will never find comfort in Palestine, Jews. Palestine will not be your land or your home, but it will be a graveyard for you. .Allah assembled you in Palestine so that the Muslims kill you, so that you may hide behind stones and trees.
Al-Baghdadi's words were inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Hamas. The Hamas Charter refers to a hadith containing a 'prophecy' of Muhammad:
The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.
It was also reported in 2016 by Britain's Sky News that the Islamic State had reportedly 'advanced plans' Â to murder Jewish children in attacks aimed at educational and youth institutions in Turkey, from kindergarten on up. The Islamic State also promised last April to conquer Rome and wipe out Jews.
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4. The real cost of Russia's Syrian campaign
By John C.K. Daly, The Arab Weekly March 6, 2017 at 1:33 PM
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Voices/2017/03/06/The-real-cost-of-Russias-Syrian-campaign/7981488823565/?nll=1
Extracts:
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March 6 (UPI) -- Russian military intervention in the Syrian conflict began in September 2015. Six months later, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the military operations there cost the country's Defense Ministry $483 million.
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For Western observers, the most striking element of Russia's Syrian intervention was the deployment of a significant portion of Russia's naval assets there, its largest surface deployment since the Cold War. At a ceremony in the Northern Fleet's Severomorsk base honoring the return of the Russian sailors, Putin stated it was his idea to send Russian naval units to Syria.
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The centerpiece of Russian naval operations was the deployment from its Northern Fleet of the country's sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov, in its first combat mission.
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The Kuznetsov was joined by other Russian warships, including nuclear-powered battle cruiser Petr Velikii, the Severomorsk and the Vice Admiral Kulakov destroyers, support vessels and anti-submarine ships.
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Despite the relatively modest cost of the Russian intervention, it has paid off handsomely for its military. Moscow and Damascus have signed a 49-year lease allowing the Russian Navy to use the Syrian port of Tartus, which will be upgraded to handle up to 11 warships at once, giving the Russian Navy a permanent base in the eastern Mediterranean.
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In the future, warships primarily from Russia's Black Sea Fleet will deploy there to support what the Russian Defense Ministry is calling the Russian Navy's "permanent" group in the Mediterranean. This development should surprise no one, as rebuilding Russia's military presence in the Mediterranean was one of the goals outlined in the 2015 edition of Russia's maritime doctrine.
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Above and beyond the value of the new naval base, however, is Russia's long-standing concern that the chaos in Syria was providing a training ground for jihadists. The Russian General Staff and the Federal Security Service said there are as many as 4,000 militants from Russia and about 5,000 from former Soviet republics fighting in Syria.
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The Russian government is concerned that these battle-hardened jihadists could return home having acquired lethal skills. Reinforcing this concern, at his meeting with the sailors, Putin said Russia does not intend to interfere in Syria's internal affairs but wants to deal with the terrorists and that Russia's goal in Syria is to stabilize the legitimate government and to "put an end to the terrorist blight."
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However, if Russian military valor is helping to turn the tide in Syria, its presence there after the end of major military operations is much less clear. Analyses estimate that the Syrian economy will need more than $1 trillion to recover from the civil war. The billions of dollars needed to reconstruct Syria are far beyond Moscow's means, which will likely focus instead on narrowly defined projects with economic value, such as rebuilding the country's oil and hydrocarbons infrastructure.
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In neighboring Iraq, where Western military power predominated, Russian companies were excluded from such projects, a situation that the Russian government is certain to ensure will not recur in Syria.
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Such concerns are far in the future. For the moment, Russia has secured the use of an invaluable naval base, ending NATO's dominance of the Eastern Mediterranean. Moscow has deployed a pragmatic policy of supporting what it defines as "legitimate" governments, combined with a stout anti-terrorist policy unaffected by notions of regime change for human rights lectures, policies that ensure it a sympathetic hearing in a number of Middle Eastern countries.
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Not a bad return on a military investment of less than $1 billion.
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5. Daniel Pipes: Ignorance of international law is not an excuse!
http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/129811
Extracts:
Since 1948, Israel has been the target of four major wars of extermination declared and waged by Arab states against it, has also been the target of two major intifadas, and unrelenting terrorist attacks by the NGO surrogates of Arab Nations. In short, in every conflict, Israel has been on the defensive.
Only a handful of people have a clear understanding of International Law, the Law of Nations, and the Geneva Convention. Many have chosen either to deliberately ignore them, to make inaccurate and obscure references to them, or to parrot what someone else said.
Here are the relevant aspects of these laws and how they affect the veracity of claims against Israel.
#1 - A country or nation that is fighting a defensive war, and that captures territory from the Belligerrent nation that attacked it, IS NOT OBLIGED IN ANY WAY TO RETURN THAT TERRITORY.
#2 - In the absence of any formal peace treaty, the nation that was attacked and that captured land in a defensive war, MAY LEGALLY ANNEX THAT TERRITORY.
#3 - In 1948, Egypt and Jordan ILLEGALLY CAPTURED, OCCUPIED, AND ANNEXED Gaza and the West Bank, respectively. BOTH Gaza and the West Bank were subsequently CEDED TO ISRAEL as part of several, formal peace treaties between these countries.
#4 - On November 22, 1967, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242, establishing the principles that were to guide the negotiations for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. The "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" clause pertains to OFFENSIVE WARS ONLY! The resolution does not make Israeli withdrawal a prerequisite for Arab action. Moreover, it does not specify how much territory Israel is required to give up.
#5 - GAZA and the WEST BANK are "disputed territories," not "occupied territories." They were "occupied territories" prior to 1967 -- illegally occupied by Egypt and Jordan.
#6 - The Palestinians are not mentioned anywhere in Resolution 242. Nowhere does it require that Palestinians be given any political rights or territory. In fact, the resolution acknowledges that two refugee problems were products of Arab aggression. More Jewish refugees fled Arab countries than "Palestinian Arab" refugees left Israel. Jews, however, were never compensated by the Arab states, nor were any UN organizations ever established to help them.
#7 - In a statement to the General Assembly October 15, 1968, the PLO, rejecting Resolution 242, said "the implementation of said resolution will lead to the loss of every hope for the establishment of peace and security in Palestine and the Middle East region."