JN-1286. 1 May 2025, 3 Iyar, 5785.
Contents:
1. Netanyahu: Israel stopped Iranian planes from reaching Syria ahead of Assad's ouster.
2. Central Bureau of Statistics says nearly 10.1 million people live in Israel - 12 times as many as in 1948 - including about 45% of world's Jews.
3. Shamrak Report.
Hamas recruited 30,000 young people from Gaza.
Nikki Haley: "A strong America prevents war. "
4. IDF Strikes Syrian Militants Threatening Druze Community (in Syria).
5. Background. Ukraine, Russia, and Edom.
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1. Netanyahu: Israel stopped Iranian planes from reaching Syria ahead of Assad's ouster
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-israel-stopped-iranian-planes-from-reaching-syria-ahead-of-assads-ouster/?utm_source
PM claims Tehran tried to send 'one or two airborne divisions' to help the Syrian leader shortly before his fall, says planes were intercepted by Israel and turned back
By Agencies and ToI Staff
Extracts:
Israeli warplanes last year intercepted Iranian aircraft headed toward Syria, preventing them from delivering troops meant to assist the country's embattled president at the time, Bashar al-Assad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.
Netanyahu said that Iran sought to save Assad after watching the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group in neighboring Lebanon suffer heavy losses in fighting with Israel.
'They had to rescue Assad,' Netanyahu said, claiming that Iran wanted to send 'one or two airborne divisions' to help the Syrian leader.
'We stopped that. We sent some F-16s to some Iranian planes that were making some routes to Damascus,' he said. 'They turned back.'
He gave no further details.
In the days leading up to the fall of Assad, Israel had observed Tehran sending troops to bolster the Syrian dictator, and warned it against taking the opportunity to smuggle weapons across the border into Lebanon.
The final rebel offensive that toppled Assad broke out on the day a ceasefire came into effect between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, bringing to a halt more than a year of fighting.
The fighting in Lebanon meant that, in the months leading up to Assad's ouster, Hezbollah withdrew its operatives from Syria, including the north, to focus on battling Israel. The rebels pointed to the terror group's withdrawal from Syria as one of the reasons they faced little resistance as they captured city after city from Assad's forces.
'We looked at the [ceasefire] agreement with Hezbollah and understood that this is the time to liberate our lands,' a rebel commander told Israel's Channel 12 at the time. 'We will not let Hezbollah fight in our areas and we will not let the Iranians take root there.'
Even with Assad gone, Israel has remained vigilant over Syria, distrustful of its new Islamist government led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
A day after the fall of the Assad regime, Israel sent its troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian forces on the strategic Golan Heights, and has kept them stationed there since.
It has described its presence in southern Syria's buffer zone as a temporary and defensive measure, though Defense Minister Israel Katz has said that troops will remain deployed in the area 'ndefinitely.'
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2. Central Bureau of Statistics says nearly 10.1 million people live in Israel - 12 times as many as in 1948 - including about 45% of world's Jews.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-population-tops-10-million-for-1st-time/?utm_source
Extracts:
... includes roughly 7.7 million people, or 77.6%, who are registered as Jewish or 'other' - a category that was previously counted separately. This category includes non-Arab Christians and people with no ethnicity listed, most of whom are entitled to live in Israel because of a Jewish grandparent or Israeli spouse, the CBS said. Some 2.1 million people living in Israel, or 20.9%, are Muslim, Christian or Druze Arabs, the CBS said. Another 250,000 people, or about 2.5%, belong to neither category, and include international students, foreign workers and undocumented immigrants, the agency reported.
.... Meanwhile, some 56,000 Israeli citizens were living abroad .... about 3.5 million people have immigrated to Israel since 1948, 47.6% of whom came starting in 1990, after Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate en masse. As of the end of 2023, the CBS said, about 45% of world Jewry lived in Israel
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3. Shamrak Report Quotes:
shamrakreport@gmail.com
Hamas recruited 30,000 young people from Gaza
Nikki Haley: "A strong America prevents war. "
Hamas Recruited 30,000 Gazans=Terrorists
The Saudi Al Arabiya channel reports that the military wing of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, recruited 30,000 young people from Gaza. According to the report, most of the recruits were trained in secret military camps run by the wing. However, it is reported that they lack military skills beyond 'guerrilla warfare,' rocket fire, and planting explosives. (They were trained well in UNRWA-run schools for this.)
Quotes of the Week:
'The only way peace happens in the Middle East is if the US stands strongly and steadfastly with Israel. A strong America prevents war. At the end of the day, it's about leadership, and America has to demonstrate that leadership, including absolute support for its allies like Israel.' - Nikki Haley, former US Ambassador to the United Nations.
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4. IDF Strikes Syrian Militants Threatening Druze Community (in Syria).
https://israel365news.com/408374/israel-honors-fallen-soldiers-as-idf-acts-to-shield-nation-and-druze-communities-from-threats/
The Israeli military launched a precision strike against a militant group in Syria on Wednesday, targeting extremists allegedly planning attacks on the Druze community near Damascus.
The Israeli Prime Minister's Office confirmed the operation, stating, 'Israel will not allow any harm to come to the Druze community in Syria.' The strike served as a warning to Syria's Islamist-led government, which Jerusalem has urged to prevent further violence against the country's Druze minority.
The statement emphasized Israel's deep-rooted bond with its own Druze citizens, many of whom have served in the IDF, and extended solidarity to their relatives across the border. Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers, which also commemorates fallen Druze servicemen, added further emotional weight to the government.s actions.
Protests broke out in northern Israel as Druze citizens blocked roads, demanding intervention. Government officials, including Ministers Meir Porush and Eli Cohen, reassured the community that Israel would not remain passive in the face of threats to their brethren abroad.
Spiritual leader Sheikh Muwaffaq Tarif appealed earlier in the day for Israel and the international community to step in, as violence escalated around Druze villages in the Damascus suburbs. In a passionate plea, he warned that failure to act could result in a massacre.
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5. Background. Ukraine, Russia, and Edom.
Sources:
Wikipedia articles interspersed with Brit-Am comments.
Ukraine is often referred to as Ruthenia though Ruthenia could also apply to a wider area.
Ruthenia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenia#
Ruthenia was used to refer to the East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Austria-Hungary, mainly to Ukrainians and sometimes Belarusians, corresponding to the territories of modern Belarus, Ukraine, Eastern Poland and some of western Russia.
Names of Rus', Russia and Ruthenia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Rus%27,_Russia_and_Ruthenia
The word Rus' referred initially to a group of Scandinavian Vikings, also known as Varangians, who founded the medieval state of Kievan Rus' in Eastern Europe in the 10th century. The term gradually acquired the meaning of the aforementioned dynastic polity itself, and also the geographic region of its heartlands Kiev, Pereiaslavl' and Chernihiv.[1] Russia is a Hellenized rendering of the same word, and Ruthenia is its Latinized form.
All kinds of explanations are given for the name "Rus."
The Brit-Am understanding compatible with European sources is that both Ruthenia" and "Rus" derive from a European wrod root measning "red." Edom also means "red."
"Ruthenia" is considered a form of the name "RUS" i.e. Red, in Hebrew "Edom."
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English name Russia first appeared in the 14th century, borrowed from Medieval Latin Russia, which was in turn a rendition of the Byzantine Greek name for Rus', (Rossia).[12] The word Ruthenia originated as a Latin designation of the region its people called Rus'.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohdan_Khmelnytsky
(1595 - 1657) was a Ruthenian (Ukrainian) nobleman and military commander of Zaporozhian Cossacks[2][3] as Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host, which was then under the suzerainty of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates (1648-1654) that resulted in the creation of an independent Cossack state in Ukraine. In 1654, he concluded the Treaty of Pereiaslav with the Russian Tsar and allied the Cossack Hetmanate with Tsardom of Russia, thus placing central Ukraine under Russian protection.[4] During the uprising, the Cossacks under his leadership massacred tens of thousands of Poles and Jews, one of the most traumatic events in Polish and Jewish history.[5]
Others criticize him for his alliance with the Crimean Tatars, which permitted the latter to take a large number of Ukrainian peasants as slaves, as the Cossacks as a military caste did not protect the kholopy, the lowest stratum of the Ukrainian people. Folk songs capture this. On the balance, the view of his legacy in present-day Ukraine is more positive than negative, with some critics acknowledging that the union with Russia was dictated by necessity and an attempt to survive in those difficult times.
In a 2018 Ukraine's Rating Sociological Group poll, 73% of Ukrainian respondents had a positive attitude to Khmelnytsky.
The assessment of Khmelnytsky in Jewish history is overwhelmingly negative because he used Jews as scapegoats and sought to eradicate Jews from Ukraine. The Khmelnytsky Uprising led to the deaths of an estimated 18,000 - 100,000 Jews. These estimates include deaths from starvation and disease.[56][57][58] Atrocity stories about massacre victims who had been buried alive, cut to pieces or forced to kill one another spread throughout Europe and beyond. The pogroms contributed to a revival of the ideas of Isaac Luria, who revered the Kabbalah, and the identification of Sabbatai Zevi as the Messiah.[59] Orest Subtelny writes:
Between 1648 and 1656, tens of thousands of Jews, given the lack of reliable data, it is impossible to establish more accurate figures, were killed by the rebels, and to this day the Khmelnytsky uprising is considered by Jews to be one of the most traumatic events in their history.[60]
The Ukrainian city of Khmelnytskyi is named after Khmelnytsky.
In most Ukrainian cities there are streets named after Bohdan Khmelnytskyi. There is also Bohdan Khmelnytskyi Avenue in the city of Dnipro.
There are monuments to Khmelnytsky in Kyiv, Chyhyryn, Chernihiv, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy, Nikopol, Kropyvnytskyi, Zaporizhzhia, and Subotiv.
The Separate Presidential Brigade "Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi", a unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine tasked with protecting the president of Ukraine, is named in honor of Khmelnytsky.[61]
The National Academy of the State Border Service of Ukraine is named after Khmelnytsky.
The Bohdan Khmelnytsky Battalion, a Russian battalion allegedly formed from Ukrainian POWs is named in honor of Khmelnytsky.[62]
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy since 2019 had been the President of Ukraine. He was born Jewish. Many of his family were killed by the German for being Jews.
His wife is non-Jewish. Their children have been baptized and according to reports so has Zelensky.
There are 30,000 Ukrainians settled in Israel,[2] while Ukraine has one of Europe's largest Jewish communities.[3] Ukraine was also the first state outside of Israel to have had both a Jewish president and prime minister simultaneously.
Ukraine has voted for UN resolutions against Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. Israel has joined Russia and the United States in voting against a UN General Assembly resolution reaffirming Ukraine's territorial integrity.
The War.
The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then supported Russian paramilitaries who began a war in the eastern Donbas region against Ukraine's military. In 2018, Ukraine declared the region to be occupied by Russia.
Rationale.
The areas occupied by Russia are mainly populated by ethnic Russian speaking Russian.
The main reason the regions were occupied by Ukraine is that all the area was once part of the Soviet Union.
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was the ruler. He was Russian but spoke Ukrainian and had been brought up with Ukrainian sympathies.
Kruschev gave the regions to Ukraine. At that time all the area was under Soviet control so it did not matter much.
Russia has always wanted the Crimea and needs it for strategic reasons.
The Europeans are backing the Ukraine in order to keep Russia weak.
Historically both sides are unpredictable.