Dr. Patrick Slattery’s News Roundup
A service of DavidDuke.com
From The Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Turkey, Israel strike preliminary agreement to normalize relations
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan clapping during the 2015 Turkish Academy of Sciences award ceremony at Presidential Complex in Ankara, Turkey, Dec. 14, 2015. (Yasin Bulbul/Presidency/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Israel and Turkey reached a preliminary agreement to renew normal relations.
The tentative agreement, hammered out during meetings in Switzerland, would include the reinstatement of ambassadors in both countries, Reuters reported Thursday, citing an unnamed Israeli official.
The Associated Press said the deal was reached by Israel’s Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen and the Turkish Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu.
Under the agreement, Israel will create a compensation fund for the families of the 10 Turkish citizens killed by Israeli forces on the Mavi Marmara in 2010. The ship was part of a flotilla of boats filled with pro-Palestinian activists attempting to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. After the incident, Turkey to cut off relations.
JNI Media reported that the compensation fund will total $20 million.
According to The Times of Israel, Turkey has agreed to drop legal proceedings against the Israel Defense Forces soldiers involved in the Mavi Marmara raid and to crack down on terrorist groups. In addition, it will expel a Hamas leader said to be running operations out of Turkey.
The agreement also calls for installing a gas pipeline through Turkey and launching talks about the sale and purchase of natural gas.
From Ynet News
Turkey holds first-ever public Hanukkah celebration
Jewish community members are calling it a ‘Hanukkah miracle’: For the first time in the country’s history, Turkey’s chief rabbi lights the Jewish holiday’s eighth candle in a public ceremony at Istanbul’s Ortaköy Square, in the presence of senior state officials and Muslim clerics. A year to remember for Turkey’s Jews: Jewish year 5776 will likely go down in history as the first time in which a public Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony was held in the Muslim country in a state-sponsored event.
Members of the Jewish community, who have always observed the holiday traditions in their homes, almost secretly, are calling it a “Hanukkah miracle” that has joined the recent Hanukkah greetings issued by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Photo: Orhan Kuzir, Istanbul’s Jewish community
From The Daily Mail
Saving their sworn enemy: Heartstopping footage shows Israeli commandos rescuing wounded men from Syrian warzone – but WHY are they risking their lives for Islamic militants?
- Elite Israeli troops rescue wounded Syrians from the world’s worst war almost every night
- They have saved more than 2,000 people since 2013, at a cost of 50 million shekels (£8.7million)
- Many are enemies of Israel and some may even be fighters for groups affiliated to Al Qaeda
- MailOnline embedded with Israeli commandos stationed on the border between Israel and Syria
- Dramatic video filmed by MailOnline and the Israeli army shows these operations taking place
- Israel says that the operation is purely humanitarian but analysts believe Israel also has strategic reasons
Under cover of darkness, an Israeli armoured car advances down the potholed road that leads to Syria. As it crests a small hill, the driver picks up the radio handset and tells his commanding officer that the border is in sight.
He kills the engine. Ten heavily-armed commandos jump out and take cover, watching for signs of ambush. Then five of them move up to the 12ft chainlink fence that marks the limit of Israeli-held territory.
On the other side, on the very edge of Syria, lies an unconscious man wrapped like a doll in a blood-drenched duvet. The commandos unlock the fence, open a section of it and drag him onto Israeli soil.
But this wounded man is not an Israeli soldier, or even an Israeli citizen. He is an Islamic militant. And his rescue forms part of an extraordinary humanitarian mission that is fraught with danger and has provoked deep controversy on all sides.
Click here for the full story
From Russia Today
Trump on Putin’s compliment: ‘Great honor’
Published time: 18 Dec, 2015 05:17
Republican U.S. presidential candidate businessman Donald Trump © Mike Blake / Reuters
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump responded to Vladimir Putin’s comment, in which the Russian president called Trump “the absolute front-runner,” stating that it was a “great honor” to receive praise from a “highly respected” leader like Putin.
“It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond,” Trump said at a rally in Columbus, Ohio.
Putin praised Donald Trump on Thursday for wanting deeper ties with Russia and described him as the “absolute front-runner in the presidential race.”
“He is a very flamboyant man, very talented, no doubt about that… He is the absolute leader of the presidential race, as we see it today. He says that he wants to move to another level of relations, to a deeper level of relations with Russia. How can we not welcome that? Of course we welcome it,” Putin said during his traditional end-of-year Q&A session with journalists.
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From Russia Today
Foreign experts, journalists verify unsealing of Turkey-downed Russian Su-24 flight recorder
Published time: 18 Dec, 2015 07:38
Edited time: 18 Dec, 2015 08:41
© RT The Russian military have invited experts from 14 nations to work on the flight recorder of the Russian Su-24 bomber downed by Turkey, but only two of them accepted their invitations, the Defense Ministry reported, before unsealing the device.
The experts who agreed to participate in the study of the flight recorder, which is to provide further evidence into the highly controversial incident, come from the UK and China, Lieut. Gen, Sergey Dronov, deputy commander of the Russian Air and Space Forces, told the media.
Turkey shot down the Russian warplane on November 24 as it was conducting an anti-terrorist mission in a region close to the Turkish border. Ankara says it used force in response to a 17-second violation of its airspace and was fully justified in doing so.
Moscow denies that any violation happened, a statement that the flight recorder may help to confirm. The device was recovered by Syrian and Russian troops shortly after the incident and transported to Russia for investigation. Moscow pledged that the study of the flight recorder would be carried out with maximum transparency to avoid any shadow of doubt that it had been tampered with.
The unsealing of the flight recorder was performed on camera on Friday. Technicians extracted three circuit boards with memory chips, some of which appeared to be damaged. Lieutenant General Sergey Baynetov, who heads the flight safety service of the Russian armed forces, told journalists that investigators would soon inform how much information could be read from the memory chips.
The boards were locked in a safe after extraction. The commission said a preliminary report into their findings may be expected Monday.
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From Russia Today
Ex-Ukrainian PM Tymoshenko is ‘scared’ of ‘inadequate’ PM Yatsenyuk, wants him jailed
Published time: 17 Dec, 2015 15:49
© Reuters Ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko says she’s “scared” of current PM Arseny Yatsenyuk, as he produces “the impression” of being “a bit inadequate” for the post.
Tymoshenko, currently leader of the ‘Fatherland’ party in the parliament, was talking with local channel ‘112 Ukraine’ when she quite pointedly said what she thinks of the sitting PM.
“Honestly, the prime minister [Arseny Yatsenyuk] scares me. I have this impression that this person is a bit inadequate. I have the figures. Can you imagine: he had planned for inflation in 2015 to reach 26.7 percent. In reality, he got 45.8 percent,” Tymoshenko said.
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From Russia Today
US calls on Turkey to withdraw ‘unauthorized’ troops from Iraq
Published time: 17 Dec, 2015 01:43
© Yilmaz Kazandioglu / Reuters The US has urged Turkey to withdraw its “unauthorized” military forces from northern Iraq, calling on Ankara to respect the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
US Vice President Joe Biden has spoken to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi regarding Turkey’s troop deployments.
“The Vice President reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Iraqi sovereignty and territorial integrity and called on Turkey to do the same by withdrawing any military forces from Iraqi territory that have not been authorized by the Iraqi government,” the White House said in a statement.
The call between Biden and al-Abadi came two days after the Vice President’s talk with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
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From Ynet News
Vatican: Catholics should not try to convert Jews
‘A Christian can never be an anti-Semite, especially because of the Jewish roots of Christianity,’ says new document issued by the Holy See; this is the first time the Catholic church officially repudiates active attempts to convert Jews.
VATICAN CITY – Catholics should not try to convert Jews and should work with them to fight anti-Semitism, the Vatican said on Thursday in a major new document that drew the Church further away from the strained relations of the past.
Christianity and Judaism are intertwined and God never annulled his covenant with the Jewish people, said the document from the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Take JTA’s 2015 news quiz: The ultimate test of Jewish and Israeli knowledge
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Brandeis’ new president: We are going to pursue diversity
Though he won’t start until next July, Liebowitz shared some of his ideas about the challenges he faces in an interview with JTA. A condensed version of our conversation follows:
Uriel Heilman: How do you anticipate the challenges of leading Brandeis will differ from those you faced at Middlebury?
Ronald Liebowitz: Each institution has its own idiosyncrasies and special challenges. Brandeis has some remarkable human resources and attributes, but it needs an understanding of itself: who it is and what it wants to become. How does it reconcile its rich past with its future?
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
7 revealing facts about Jews at American colleges
1. University of Florida has the most Jewish students of any North American college
University of Florida, with its 6,500 Jewish (out of 33,720 total) undergraduates, edged out out other heavily Jewish public colleges, like University of Maryland and University of Michigan (both with 6,000 plus Jewish undergrads). Two of the top three and four of the top 20 public colleges are in Florida. The private college with the most Jews is New York University, with 6,000 (out of 24,985 total).
2. Barnard is the most-Jewish college that it not officially Jewish
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Sheldon Silver’s son-in-law sentenced to 2 years for Ponzi scheme
NEW YORK (JTA) — A son-in-law of the recently convicted former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has been sentenced to two years in prison for running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Marcello Trebitsch, 37, was sentenced in federal court in Manhattan Wednesday and ordered to pay nearly $5.9 million in restitution, several media outlets reported. He pleaded guilty in July, admitting he cheated four investors out of almost $6 million in the Ponzi scheme.
Trebitsch’s wife, Michelle Trebitsch, is the daughter of Silver, a longtime Democratic New York State Assembly member who was convicted on seven corruption charges in an unrelated case on Nov. 30. Silver has said he plans to appeal his conviction.
READ: Silver’s arrest a 2nd strike for N.Y. Orthodox power brokers
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
GOP candidate Ben Carson cancels Israel trip citing ‘security concerns’
(JTA) — Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson cancelled a trip to Israel, citing “security concerns.”
Carson had been scheduled to travel to Israel on December 27 and meet with Israeli government officials, and then travel to Kenya, Zambia and Nigeria, returning to the United States on January 2, according to the Washington Post.
“The trip has been cancelled due to significant security concerns,” campaign spokesman Doug Watts said in a statement Thursday.
“They were of such a nature that we found it prudent not to put anyone at any kind of risk,” Watts said.
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From Ynet News
Yom Kippur declared official UN holiday
UN employees have been getting days off on Christmas and Eid al-Fitr, and now the most holy day of the Jewish year is being recognized as well. A diplomatic effort that began two years ago bore fruit on Friday, when the UN Secretariat announced that Yom Kippur will be recognized as an official UN holiday.
The efforts to make Yom Kippur a recognized holiday at the Unuted Nations began during previous Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor’s tenure. The point of it was to get UN member states to acknowledge the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. About 60 members supported the move in the past, among them the US, Canada, and the European Union, but because of the objections of Arab states, headed by Saudi Arabia, it kept getting pushed back.
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From Ynet News
Canada’s prime minister welcomes refugees at the airport
While Donald Trump continues his anti-Muslim incitement in the US, the first group of Syrian refugees lands in Canada, the first of 25,000 expected to arrive by February; PM Trudeau came to greet them: ‘They step off the plane as refugees, but they walk out of this terminal as permanent residents of Canada.’
The first Canadian government plane carrying Syrian refugees arrived in Toronto late Thursday where they were greeted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is pushing forward with his pledge to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February.
The arrival of the military flight carrying 163 refugees stands in stark contrast to the US, which plans to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year and where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump caused a worldwide uproar with a proposal to temporarily block Muslims from entering the US.
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