Jerusalem News (2 January, 2014, 11 Tevet, 5775)
Contents:
1. STUDY SHOWS GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS HELPING TROPICAL FORESTS
by Arutz Sheva Staff
2. POLICE CHIEF AWARDS ELITE 'ARAB' UNDERCOVER UNIT
by Yoni Kempinski, Ari Yashar
3. Netanyahu lauds US, Australia for efforts to reject Palestinian UN bid
4. Israeli Arab Bourgeoisie
Elie Rekhess: Rise of an Isareli Arab middle class focused on establishing its socioeconomic status
5. Interesting Articles.
(a) Miraculous Signs in Israel
(b) Through Judah
We Live because of Religious Jews!
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1. STUDY SHOWS GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS HELPING TROPICAL FORESTS
by Arutz Sheva Staff
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/189332
Extracts:
A new research study led by NASA has reversed commonly held theories about carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, finding that the emissions in fact are absorbed by tropical forests at a higher rate than they are released by them, leading to a boost in growth in the forests.
The study found tropical forests absorb 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually, using it to grow. Overall the forests and other vegetation absorb around 2.7 billion tons of CO2, about 30% of the amount emitted by humans, reports the British Daily Mail.
"This is good news, because uptake in boreal forests is already slowing, while tropical forests may continue to take up carbon for many years," said Dr. David Schimel, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California who headed the study.
Data until now had been interpreted to suggest tropical forests were releasing more CO2 than they absorb. But the new study finds the opposite is true - tropical forests use much more CO2 to grow at faster rates than previously thought.
The research led by Schimel was published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, and was based on computer models, satellite imagery, data from forest plots and photosynthetic experiments, all coming together to detail how forests absorb CO2.
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2. POLICE CHIEF AWARDS ELITE 'ARAB' UNDERCOVER UNIT
by Yoni Kempinski, Ari Yashar
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/189301
Extracts:
Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino on Tuesday visited a base in the Judea and Samaria region of the Border Patrol's special mista'aravim unit, an elite squad of undercover forces disguising themselves as Arabs to covertly stop terror.
"In a period in which terror raises its head in the world and in Israel, the people of Israel have someone to rely on," said Danino. "Anonymous and daring warriors who act without fear, far from the limelight to defend every resident of the state."
"I came to express my appreciation and thanks to you, the mista'aravim unit of Judea and Samaria, whose actions are not exposed to the public eye, whose deeds in their overwhelming majority are not published and cannot be published, but whose contribution to the security of civilians of the state cannot be measured in gold," continued the police chief.
Danino stated "in my name and in the name of the Israeli police, I came to thank you. I am proud of you, the entire police is proud of you and also the entire public."
The unit's missions have led to the complicated and classified arrests of hundreds of terrorists, many of them coming just a step before the terrorists conducted lethal attacks on innocent civilians.
Counter-terrorism is the specialty of the mista'aravim with their unique abilities to infiltrate the Arab street and go unnoticed while assuming numerous identities. For many years the unit has tipped the scales in Israel's favor during the unrelenting fight against Arab terrorism.
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3. Netanyahu lauds US, Australia for efforts to reject Palestinian UN bid
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Netanyahu-lauds-US-Australia-for-efforts-to-reject-Palestinian-bid-in-UN-386233?utm_source=Newsletter+12-31-2014&utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_medium=email
ExtractsL
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday lauded the US and Australia for voting against the Palestinian UN Security Council draft resolution on Tuesday, and praised Rwanda and Nigeria for abstaining.
"I want to express appreciation and gratitude to the United States and Australia, as well as special appreciation to the President of Rwanda, my friend Paul Kagame, and to the President of Nigeria, my friend Goodluck Jonathan," Netanyahu said when he arrived Wednesday morning to vote in the Likud primary.
"I spoke with both of them, they promised me personally that they would not support this decision, and they stood by their words. That is what tipped the scales," he added.
The Palestinian resolution calling for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines by 2017, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, did not muster the necessary nine votes Tuesday in the Security Council.
Earlier Wednesday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said the Palestinian failure to get their statehood resolution passed Wednesday in the UN Security Council should teach them that provocations and attempts to unilaterally impose conditions on Israel will lead them nowhere.
"The Palestinian disregard for important countries in the international arena, first and foremost the US, stems from the backing they get form some of the states in Europe," he said, in an obvious reference to the 'for' votes cast by France and Luxembourg.
While France and Luxembourg voted for the Palestinian resolution, two other EU countries, Britain and Lithuania, abstained, illustrating the wide differences on the Mideast that exist inside the 28-state EU.
Liberman praised his ministry for the work it did to thwart the resolution, the second time in three years that Israel dodged a bullet on this issue in the Security Council, and cited Israel's concentrated diplomatic efforts in Africa, the far East and central Europe. In 2011 the Palestinians failed in their attempt to win full UN statehood recognition in the UN.
In addition to the United States, Australia voted against the resolution on Tuesday. Britain, Lithuania, South Korea, and two of the three African states on the Security Council, Rwanda and Nigeria, ll abstained, depriving the Palestinians of their nine votes needed to pass the resolution and force a US veto.
Meanwhile, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz expressed his criticism of the draft Palestinian statehood bid, despite its failure to pass the Security Council vote.
"The Palestinian failure to secure a vote in the UN Security Council does not mitigate the Palestinian Authorities hostile and unilateral political offensive against Israel," he charged a day after the vote.
Steinitz said it was "a worrying sign" that France and Britain - two of Israel's allies - supported the resolution or abstained from the vote on it.
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4. Israeli Arab Bourgeoisie
Elie Rekhess: Rise of an Isareli Arab middle class focused on establishing its socioeconomic status
Excerpt from: Between Alienated Elites and the Developing Middle Class, by Elie Rekhess,
Bayan, Issue 3, December 2014, Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University published in cooperation with the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) Program for the Study of Arabs in Israel
http://www.inss.org.il/uploadImages/systemFiles/Bayan%20no-3%20December-14%20ENG.pdf ...
The foundation of Jewish-Arab relations has proven to be impressively resilient. One of the sources for this resilience is the consolidation of an opposing trend: the rise of an Arab middle class, which is focused on establishing its socioeconomic status.
To eliminate possible misunderstandings, one should emphasize that Palestinian-Arab nationalism has not been marginalized among this class; on the contrary.
Yet concurrently, this new class renounces the political leadership and is instead seeking its place in Israeli society.
It should be emphasized that the socioeconomic disparity between Jews and Arabs is still significant and is a constant source of frustration and pent-up anger. It is evident in every possible area: employment of women, education (dropout rates, matriculation exam pass rates, the number of university students), infrastructure, industrialization, and economic development. However, at the same time, a middle class with reasonable economic means is forming. Action taken by the government, particularly through the Authority for the Economics Development of the Minorities Sector has begun to bear fruit, and thirty-two employment centers have been established.
While the rate of employment in hi-tech professions is low, it has steadily increased: in 2008, there were thirty-six workers in hi-tech companies in Nazareth, and by 2014, the number had jumped to 400. The number of Arabs in hi-tech professions remains marginal (1,200), though between 2008 and 2013, the percentage of Arab hi-tech workers out of the total number of people employed in the field rose from 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent.
Professions such as pharmacy science, for example, are nearly "controlled" by Arabs.
Eleven percent of all doctors in Israel are Arabs, including twenty three department heads and two heads of hospitals.
We are also witnessing a trend toward abandonment of the traditional, conservative way of life and adoption of a modern lifestyle. In housing, for example, there is a tendency to replace the framework of the hamula (clan) with high-density, saturated housing.
 Cultural changes are also evident, and there is an increasing tendency to consume Israeli, though not necessarily Jewish, cultural products, particularly during leisure hours. On weekends, the Tel Aviv port has numerous Arab visitors - individuals, couples, and families - who come to the bustling site to shop and eat.
The spoken language among many is "Arabebrew," a hybrid local dialect combining Hebrew and spoken Arabic.
As noted, these are only initial signs. Some of the observations noted above are impressionistic in nature.
No comprehensive study has yet been conducted to examine these trends according to reliable scientific criteria. Nevertheless, the trend should not be ignored.
The crucial question is which will prevail, alienation or integration
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IMRA - Independent Media Review and AnalysisÂ
www.imra.org.il
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5. Interesting Articles.
(a) Miraculous Signs in Israel
http://www.therefinersfire.org/jews_return_to_israel.htm
(b) Through Judah
We Live because of Religious Jews!
http://hebrewnations.com/articles/inme.html