Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday December 6, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Hollander/Pool

By Dan Williams and Simon Johnson

JERUSALEM/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Relations between Sweden and Israel hit a fresh low on Sunday after Israel said Sweden's foreign minister had accused it of unlawful killings and Stockholm responded by saying that the comments had been "blown out of reasonable proportion".

Relations between the two countries have nose-dived since Sweden's Social Democrat-led government recognized a Palestinian state last year. Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom deepened the rift by describing Palestinians' plight as a factor leading to Islamist radicalization.

In the latest row, Israel condemned as "scandalous" on Sunday what it said was a suggestion by Wallstrom its forces had unlawfully killed Palestinians involved in a surge of street violence, and warned of a diplomatic rupture with Stockholm.

Sweden said Wallstrom's comments had been misunderstood.

"The Minister for Foreign Affairs did not, as alleged, say that extrajudicial executions occur in Israel," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and Wallstrom said in a statement.

"The situation in the Middle East is difficult enough without having to be encumbered by misunderstandings about anybody's intentions."

In the latest violence in Jerusalem, on Sunday, a Palestinian rammed his car into a passer-by in a Jewish neighborhood, slightly injuring him, and then got out of the vehicle and stabbed another man, who suffered superficial wounds.

Security forces shot the attacker dead, police said.

Addressing Swedish lawmakers on Friday, Wallstrom denounced the almost daily Palestinian knife, gun or car-ramming attacks but urged Israel to avoid excessive force.

"And likewise, the response must not be of the kind -- and this is what I say in other situations where the response is such that it results in extrajudicial executions or is disproportionate in that the number of people killed on that side exceeds the original number of deaths many times over," Wallstrom said in the official English translation of her statement provided by the ministry.

Sweden said she had been talking in general terms about the principles of international law concerning self-defense and the importance of responding in a proportional manner.

Wallstrom's remarks, however, touched a nerve in Israel, whose forces have killed 103 Palestinians since Oct. 1, of whom it has identified 64 as assailants or who were caught on camera carrying out assaults. Most of the others died in clashes with police or troops.

The Palestinian attacks, fueled in part by strife over a contested Jerusalem shrine as well as a peacemaking process deadlocked since early 2014, have killed 19 Israelis and a U.S. citizen.

"I condemn the statements, the scandalous statements, made by the foreign minister of Sweden," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet in broadcast remarks.

"It seems she expects Israel's citizens to bare their throats to those trying to stab them. This will not happen, and we will continue to protect the lives of Israel's citizens."

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said in a radio interview that she and Netanyahu, who also functions as foreign minister, would convene a meeting on Sunday to decide on what she anticipated would be a "sharp response" to Wallstrom's comments.

Hotovely hinted at a possible exclusion of the Swedish government from Israeli efforts to revive peacemaking efforts with the Palestinians that have been stalled since early 2014.

"Sweden has crossed all red lines in relations with Israel," Hotovely told Army Radio. "This is defamation of Israel and the statements are distancing Sweden from the ranks of enlightened nations that can take part in the dialogue about rights in the region."

(Writing by Dan Williams, editing by Louise Heavens)

Obama: Muslims must do more against ISIS

Olivier Knox

Chief Washington Correspondent

December 6, 2015

In an unusual prime-time plea from the Oval Office, President Barack Obama on Sunday pressed Muslims in America and around the world to “decisively and unequivocally” confront the kind of extremism in their midst that has fueled the rise of the so-called Islamic State. His speech, quickly dismissed by Republicans as more of the same ineffectual prescription, came as U.S. officials worried about holiday-season attacks in America either directed or inspired by the group, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL.

“Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and al-Qaeda promote - to speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity,” he said.

Obama also warned strongly against casting the war against the Islamic State as a clash of religions, saying ISIS uses that notion as a potent recruiting tool and warning that doing so risks alienating critical allies inside Islam.

“If we’re to succeed in defeating terrorism, we must enlist Muslim communities as some of our strongest allies rather than push them away through suspicion and hate,” the president said.

Obama also offered a full-throated defense of his strategy for confronting ISIS in Iraq and Syria at a time when solid majorities of Americans of all parties doubt that the U.S.-led campaign is on track for victory. Recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California have fueled those concerns, including among Democrats.

“Here’s what I want you to know: The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us,” Obama promised.

“So far we have no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas or that they were part of a broader conspiracy here at home,” Obama said. But, he emphasized, “this was an act of terrorism.”

Obama worked to banish any doubts that he has responded forcefully to the threat, underlining that the United States has “surged” intelligence cooperation with its allies and stepped up the military campaign against ISIS. He called on Congress to help tighten restrictions on visa-free travel to the United States, an attempt to prevent ISIS fighters who are Western European citizens from carrying out attacks in the United States. He pressed tech companies to work with law enforcement to make it harder for extremists by restricting the public’s access to encrypted communications that might defy surveillance.

And he called on Congress to take several steps: Prohibit people on the so-called “no-fly” list meant to keep terrorists off airplanes from buying a gun; curb Americans’ access to “powerful assault weapons”; and debate and vote on an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a formal congressional green light for the undeclared war on ISIS.

The president also defended his decision not to send more American ground troops to Iraq and Syria.

“The strategy that we are using now – air strikes, special forces, and working with local forces who are fighting to regain control of their own country – that is how we’ll achieve a more sustainable victory, and it won’t require us sending a new generation of Americans overseas to fight and die for another decade on foreign soil,” he said.

But Obama has gradually escalated the American role in the war over the past year. And, in an apparent acknowledgement of the global nature of the battlefield, he promised that “our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary.”

Republicans pounced on his defense of his current approach.

“President Obama offered no changes to his reactive, indirect, and incremental strategy. He continues to assume that time is on our side. It is not,” said Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “If we do not destroy this threat now, and fast, no one should be surprised if America gets attacked again.”

Rand Paul reacts to President Obama's address

On December 6, Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul speaks with Yahoo News Global Anchor Katie Couric on gun laws, ISIS and Silicon Valley's role in the fight against terrorism following President Obama's speech.

CHICAGO (AP) -- The U.S. Justice Department is expected to launch a wide-ranging investigation this week into the patterns and practices of the Chicago Police Department after recent protests over a video showing a white Chicago police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The person was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly before it was announced and spoke Sunday to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The civil rights probe would follow others recently in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, and come as the police department and Mayor Rahm Emanuel are under intense scrutiny over their handling of the October 2014 death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder Nov. 24, more than a year after the killing and just hours before the release of police dashboard camera footage showing the officer shooting the teenager.

The video shows McDonald veering away from officers on a four-lane street when Van Dyke, seconds after exiting his squad car, opens fire from close range. The officer continues shooting after McDonald crumples to the ground and is barely moving. The video does not include sound, which authorities have not explained.

The Chicago City Council signed off on a $5 million settlement with McDonald's family even before the family filed a lawsuit, and city officials fought in court for months to keep the video from being released publicly. The city's early efforts to suppress its release coincided with Emanuel's re-election campaign, when the mayor was seeking African-American votes in a tight race.

Since the release of the video, Emanuel forced Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to resign and formed a task force to examine the department. But the calls for the mayor to resign — something he said he won't do — have grown louder from protesters in the city, including more than 200 people who shouted that he step down during a Sunday afternoon march. Protesters counted to 16 in reference to the shots fired, a number that has taken on a symbolic significance since the demonstrations began.

Civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson said he was pleased with the decision to investigate Chicago. Jackson said he hoped that the investigation would focus not only on the police department, but on Emanuel's office and the Cook County State's Attorney's office, which he and others have criticized for taking so long to bring charges against Van Dyke.

"All three of them — the police, City Hall and the prosecutor's office — are suspect," Jackson said. "We cannot trust them."

Emanuel initially said a federal civil rights investigation of Chicago police tactics would be "misguided." He later reversed course and said he would welcome the Justice Department's involvement — something that politicians including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan have called for.

A spokesman for the police department referred a request for comment about the reported investigation to Adam Collins, a spokesman for the mayor's office.

"We welcome the engagement of the Department of Justice as we work to restore trust in our police department and improve our system of police accountability," Collins said.

On Friday, Chicago released hundreds of pages that show police officers reported a very different version of the McDonald encounter than video shows. In the documents, police officers portray McDonald as being far more menacing than he appears in dashcam footage. That further angered activists and protesters, who were already accusing the city of a cover up.

The Justice Department in the last six years has opened more than 20 investigations of police departments. In March, the department released a scathing report of the Ferguson police force that found pervasive civil rights abuses. It opened an investigation of Baltimore police in May in response to the death of a black man in police custody.

Justice Department investigations typically look for systematic violations of federal law. When it announced the Baltimore probe, the department said it would focus on issues including the use of deadly force, stops, searches, arrests and whether there is a pattern of discrimination in policing.

Emanuel acknowledged "the checkered history of misconduct in the Chicago Police Department" in an opinion column published over the weekend in the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.

"Chicago is facing a defining moment on the issues of crime and policing and the even larger issues of truth and justice," Emanuel wrote. "To meet this moment, we need to conduct a painful but honest reckoning of what went wrong — not just in one instance, but over decades."

The University of Chicago said last month that an analysis by its civil rights and police accountability clinic found that of 56,000 complaints against Chicago police, only a fraction led to disciplinary action.

In one of the most notorious cases of wrongdoing, dozens of men, mostly African-American, said they were subjected to torture from a Chicago police squad headed by former commander Jon Burge during the 1970s, '80s and early '90s, and many spent years in prison. Burge was convicted of lying about the torture and served 4½ years in prison.

Of 409 shootings involving Chicago police since September 2007, only two have led to allegations against an officer being found credible, the Chicago Tribune reported, citing data from the agency that investigates police cases.

Late Sunday night, the mayor's office announced that the head of that agency, the Independent Police Review Authority had resigned effective immediately.

Emanuel's office said in a statement that while Scott Ando had reduced the agency's backlog of cases during his tenure, "... it has become clear that new leadership is required as we rededicate ourselves to dramatically improving our system of police accountability."

Ando will be replaced by Sharon Fairly, general counsel and first deputy of the city's Office of the Inspector General and a former assistant U.S. attorney.

___

Tucker contributed from Washington, D.C.

Source: U.S. to investigate Chicago police

The Justice Department is expected to announce that it will open an investigation after a teen's slaying sparked protests.
Review of practices

Damascus (AFP) - Syria's foreign ministry on Monday condemned US-led coalition air strikes on an army camp that killed several regime soldiers as "flagrant aggression," state media reported.

"The Syrian Arab Republic strongly condemns this flagrant aggression by the US-led coalition forces, which blatantly violates the objectives of the UN charter," the foreign ministry said in a letter to the UN Security Council and secretary general.

"The Syrian foreign ministry demands the UN Security Council act immediately in the face of this aggression and take appropriate measures to prevent its recurrence," the letter added.

It said three Syrian soldiers had been killed and 13 wounded in strikes by four coalition planes on an army camp in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor earlier said four Syrian soldiers had been killed and 13 injured.

The monitor said the strikes had hit a camp in the west of Deir Ezzor, around two kilometres (one mile) from an area controlled by the Islamic State group.

View gallery

Map locating countries carrying out aerial strikes against Iraq and Syria (135 x 90 mm) (AFP Photo/S …

The Observatory said it was the first time a US-led coalition strike had killed Syrian government troops.

Much of Deir Ezzor province is under the control of IS, which is regularly targeted there by the US-led coalition, but the regime remains present in small areas, including in the provincial capital.

The coalition has been carrying out strikes against IS since September 2014, and does not coordinate with the government in Damascus.

The Syrian government has regularly criticised the US-led strikes as ineffective and illegal because they are not coordinated with regime forces, and the ministry that the Deir Ezzor incident was further evidence of the coalition's failings.

"The US coalition lacks the seriousness and credibility to effectively combat terrorism," the ministry said.