CFR Sweep at Fed: Fischer, Brainard, Powell to Join Yellen-

New American

Written by William F. Jasper January 12, 2014



The rumors have been confirmed; President Obama’s plan to name Stanley Fischer as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve was made official on January 10. At the same time he announced Fischer’s appointment, the president also named Lael Brainard and Jerome Powell to positions as governors on the seven-member Federal Reserve Board. Fed Chairman Janet Yellen and Vice Chairman Fischer also serve as governors.

Unremarked in any of the media coverage of the appointments is the significant fact that all four of these Obama nominations to one of the most powerful institutions on the planet are not only members, but high-level operatives, of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the premier U.S. “think tank” promoting world government for the past century.

Federal Reserve Board Governor Daniel Tarullo is also a CFR member. As we reported on December 29, Stanley Fischer was named this past September to be a “distinguished fellow” in residence at Pratt House, the CFR’s New York City headquarters. In that same article, we noted that “many additional CFR members and officers have rotated in and out of top positions at the Fed, Treasury, and the big Wall Street firms, such as former Fed Chairmen Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, as well as current Federal Reserve Regional Bank Presidents William Dudley (New York City), Dennis P. Lockhart (Atlanta), Richard W. Fisher (Dallas), and current Federal Reserve Board of Governors members Daniel K. Tarullo, Jerome H. Powell … and Janet Yellen.”

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Starvation reported at Palestinian camp in Syria

By Liz Sly and Ahmed Ramadan, Washington Post, January 14, 2014

BEIRUT—Disturbing images of emaciated children and elderly people who appear to have died of hunger are emerging from a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus, where thousands are at risk of starvation after months of living under siege, U.N. officials and camp residents said Tuesday.

The growing concern for the welfare of residents of the Yarmouk camp comes ahead of a major international conference in Kuwait on Wednesday aimed at raising a record $6.5 billion for U.N. efforts to aid suffering Syrians inside and outside their war-ravaged country.

But although the United Nations is feeding more than 3.8 million people in Syria, those most in need are not being reached because of the complicated dynamics of the battlefield. Fighters loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad surround numerous rebel-held neighborhoods, notably in the suburbs of Damascus, and refuse to allow access to food or medical aid as part of what U.S. and other Western leaders have repeatedly described as a policy of deliberate obstruction.

U.N. officials say they are especially alarmed at the reports of a growing number of deaths emanating from Yarmouk, just a few miles from the heart of Damascus, the capital.

“There is profound civilian suffering in Yarmouk, with widespread incidence of malnutrition and the absence of medical care,” said Chris Gunness of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which is charged with helping displaced Palestinians across the region.

Most camp residents have long been eating little other than stale vegetables, powdered tomato paste and animal feed, he said.

Camp residents and activists on Tuesday reported the deaths of two more people from hunger, bringing to 48 the number who have died since November from illnesses related to the siege, according to Farouq al-Rifai, an activist in Yarmouk who uses a pseudonym to protect family members living in government-held areas.

At least five of those deaths were directly caused by malnutrition, he said, while others were attributable to a range of causes related to the lack of food and medicine, including anemia and diabetes. Some are dying of illnesses related to the poor quality of food, such as a family of five that killed and ate a cat and then succumbed to food poisoning, Rifai said. Some food is available, but at prices that few can afford; most people are subsisting on meager quantities of lentils, onions and, sometimes, boiled grass.

All of the victims have been children and the elderly, but “the hunger is inescapable for everyone,” Rifai said.

The deprivation brings more suffering for Palestinians who fled their homes after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and have since lived, with their descendants, as refugees in camps across the region, making them uniquely vulnerable to its many crises.

More than 160,000 Palestinians lived in Yarmouk on the eve of the uprising in Syria, which began in 2011, but most have since fled the fighting, reducing the population to about 18,000, according to the United Nations. The number may be higher, because thousands of displaced Syrians also have taken refuge at the camp.

In a video posted Monday on YouTube, a teenage boy living in the Yarmouk camp described the anguish of residents.

“We just want to eat and drink, and we have no money,” he said. “What have we done to be part of this?” he added, breaking into sobs. “It is nothing to do with us.”

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UN says pace of Israeli settler attacks up 4-fold

By Karin Laub and Mohammed Daraghmeh, AP, Jan 15, 2014

QUSRA, West Bank (AP)—The annual rate of Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians has almost quadrupled in eight years, U.N. figures show, buttressing claims that Israeli security forces have largely failed to stem the so-called “price tag” campaign in which thugs cut down trees, deface mosques and beat Palestinian farmers.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly denounced such attacks—the defense minister last week branded them “outright terrorism”—and the military says soldiers are under strict orders to stop them.

Still, critics say Israeli governments stacked with pro-settler politicians have often been reluctant to confront settlers, even those seen as a hardline fringe.

“There is not enough pressure from the prime minister, the defense minister, the interior minister to prevent this,” said Gadi Zohar, a former senior army commander in the West Bank.

A dramatic incident near this Palestinian farming village last week highlighted the potential of such attacks to escalate and jeopardize fragile U.S.-led peace efforts. “Price tag” refers to settler attacks on Palestinians in response to army actions against any of dozens of West Bank settlement outposts.

Last week’s events began when troops uprooted olive trees planted on private Palestinian land by settlers from the Esh Kodesh outpost.

Later that day, about 20 Israelis moved toward nearby villages, including Qusra. Palestinians said the settlers damaged olive trees, and were caught by villagers after a stone-throwing clash and held by them for more than two hours before being handed to the army.

Footage of the settlers surrounded by an angry crowd led the TV news in Israel that day, with commentators saying serious bloodshed was averted by Palestinians who shielded the settlers.

Seven Israelis were questioned and placed under house arrest, police said. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon warned he would show zero tolerance, but Palestinians are skeptical.

So far, there have been at least two cases of vandalism in apparent response to the Qusra incident. On Wednesday, residents of a village in the area reported that the door of a mosque was set on fire and some of the carpet was burned. Graffiti read, “Blood for blood, Qusra.”

Settlers have damaged hundreds of trees in Qusra, killed 18 sheep, torched six cars and set fire to a mosque in dozens of attacks, said Mayor Abdel Azim Wadi. The village has lost half its lands to settlements.

The mayor said Israeli soldiers either stand by during settler attacks or fire tear gas, rubber bullets and occasionally live rounds at Palestinians if the attacks escalate into stone-throwing clashes. A Qusra man was killed by army fire and dozens were wounded by settlers and soldiers, he said.

Palestinians say “price tag” is part of Israel’s policy of cementing control over the West Bank, the largest of three war-won areas the Palestinians want for a state. They note that Israel has been providing practical support for outposts even though they were set up without formal government permission.

“Who gives them water, electricity, who gives them security, and paves their streets?” said Qusra resident Abdel Hakim Odeh, referring to the government’s policy toward the outposts. “These gangs are used by the government against the Palestinians.”

Israeli military correspondent Amos Harel said the army faces a problem of mindset among young soldiers who view their basic mission as protecting settlers. “When extreme fringes among the settlers commit violence against Palestinians, few soldiers can internalize this and change their behavior,” Harel wrote in the Haaretz daily, saying it’s up to the senior command to set a different tone.

The military has overall authority in the West Bank and soldiers are usually the first to respond to unrest, while Israeli police deal with Israeli civilians, including investigating settler violence.

Indictments were only filed in 8.5 percent of 825 completed police investigations monitored by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din.

In Qusra and two neighboring villages, residents filed 21 police complaints between 2011 and 2013, but none led to indictments so far, said Yesh Din. Twelve cases were closed, including a February shooting in which 28-year-old Hilmi Hassan was seriously wounded in a confrontation with settlers.

Yesh Din said police were given photos of Israeli civilians who participated in the incident.

Hassan said a settler shot him in the stomach from about 20 meters (yards) away. Hassan was flown by helicopter to an Israeli hospital. There, police questioned him, but Hassan refused to sign a statement, fearing officers were trying to portray him as the instigator.

“If a settler was shot, they would have imposed curfew on the entire area, but when a Palestinian like me is shot, they accuse him of provoking the settlers,” said Hassan.

The army said Palestinian complaints about settler attacks during the annual olive harvest dropped by half, to 20, from 2012 to 2013.

Despite such efforts, U.N. figures show a steady rise in the number of settler attacks.

There have been 2,100 such attacks since 2006, the year the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) started counting. The annual totals are up from 115 in 2006 to 399 in 2013.

The “price tag” campaign first made headlines in 2008, three years after Israel dismantled its settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank. The government portrayed the unilateral pullback at the time as a tactical move to strengthen Israel’s hold on the rest of the West Bank, but it outraged settlers.

Some settlers devised price tag to deter Israeli authorities from taking down more settlements, particularly the outposts that are home to “hilltop youth,” the most fanatic among the settlers.

Since then, settlers have routinely attacked Palestinian villages whenever the army moves against an outpost. Vandals have broadened their targets to churches, mosques and dovish groups in Israel, as well as Israeli military bases.

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New Evangelical Movement Seeks Split From Pro-Israel Line

McKay Coppins, Buzzfeed, January 14, 2014

WASHINGTON—Figures with deep roots in America’s religious right have launched a quiet effort aimed at pushing evangelical Christians away from decades of growing loyalty to Israel and toward increased solidarity with the Palestinians.

The campaign by a coalition of religious leaders, international nonprofits, and activists has taken place in recent years largely behind the scenes and away from the prying eyes of the political press—and it’s being driven by a generation of Evangelicals alienated by the way their faith was yoked to Republican foreign policy during the Bush years. Now, organizations like the Telos Group and the large Christian nonprofit World Vision have joined a small army of ministers and Christian opinion-makers working to reorient Evangelicals’ stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—producing documentaries about the plight of Palestinian Christians, providing theological rationale for a more “balanced” view of the issue, and taking Evangelicals on trips to the Middle East.

The goal is to soften the bulletproof political alliance between American Evangelicals and Israel—forged over decades of successful courtship by Israeli governments and pro-Israel forces in the U.S.—and to make room on the religious right for Palestinian sympathies. If the movement is successful, it would represent a move toward mainline, politically liberal Christian denominations that have long been aligned with the Palestinian cause. The Presbyterian Church USA, for instance, briefly adopted a policy of divesting from some companies doing business in Israel.

The campaign has alarmed America’s most committed Christian supporters of Israel, who acknowledge their rivals’ message is gaining momentum within the church.

One of the evangelical leaders calling for a more “nuanced” view of the conflict is Todd Deatherage, who spent five years in the Bush State Department before co-founding the Telos Group to expose Evangelicals to the complexities of the issue. He said their purpose is not to persuade Christians to turn against Israel, but rather “to affirm and support the dignity of all the people of the Holy Land, to be truly pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian at the same time.”

To achieve this, his group organizes about 15 trips to Israel every year, where American participants—mostly Evangelicals determined to be open-minded and influential in their respective communities—meet with peace activists, victims of violence on both sides of the conflict, and members of the Bethlehem Bible College, which trains Arab Christian pastors. The objective, Deatherage says, is to “change the conversation” among conservative Christians in the U.S.

“We want people to go on these trips and then go back and change others’ minds by talking about their own experience, taking the things they’ve learned and using them to help others understand what it means to be global citizens,” he said.

Lynne Hybels, an evangelical writer and minister heavily engaged in what she calls the “pro-peace” movement in Israel, was even more blunt about their intentions. She said they hope to “build a political constituency that supports peace and supports policymakers with the courage and commitment to work for peace.” As Hybels sees it, that means occasionally standing up for Palestinians—and not allowing Christian critics to get away with accusing them of “abandoning God’s chosen people.”

There has always been a small vocal minority of American evangelical provocateurs who rail against modern-day Israel at progressive political rallies and in the pages of Sojourners magazine. But the current campaign is attracting attention in large part because its leaders boast the kind of conservative Christian credentials even Mike Huckabee could appreciate.

For example, a 2010 documentary questioning the wisdom of Evangelicals’ unwavering commitment to Israel was endorsed by a top official at World Vision, one of the largest Christian humanitarian organizations in the world. The film has since been screened several times at World Vision events, and it received a favorable review in America’s leading evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, which declared, “Christian Zionism is officially on notice.”

Meanwhile, Gabe Lyons—a young evangelical organizer and graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University—has put on series of Christian conferences aimed, in part, at promoting an “open, honest discussion” on the Middle East conflict. Like many of his peers, he believes the evangelical conversation on this topic has been hijacked by political activists—and he wants to reclaim it.

“The evangelical community has only heard one narrative on this issue. Part of the responsibility we have is to make sure they hear the rest of it,” said Lyons, who believes he’s witnessing a shift in opinion among “younger Evangelicals who are just getting full exposure to what’s really happening in the region.”

The foreign policy of the conservative Christian movement has long been defined by a fervent, often biblically inspired, devotion to Israel, with top Republican leaders frequently citing their faith as a driving force in their commitment to protecting the “Promised Land.” This dynamic was most visible during the presidency of George W. Bush, a political icon of Christian conservatism who often framed his agenda for the Middle East—which included an unwavering alliance with Israel—in terms of divine destiny. In the 2012 Republican primaries, Texas Gov. Rick Perry declared, “As a Christian, I have a clear directive to support Israel.”

If Evangelicals’ minds are beginning to change—as advocates on both sides of the church’s Israel divide contend—the trend has yet to be borne out in public polling. A Pew survey last year found that a staggering 82% of white Evangelicals believe God gave Israel to the Jewish people—more than twice the proportion of American Jews, and up 10 points from a similar poll in 2005.

Still, Deatherage says Evangelicals don’t need to abandon their theological beliefs about Israel in order to feel Christian sympathy for the suffering of the Palestinians. In fact, Deatherage said the most eye-opening experience for many of the people he takes on Telos trips is interacting with the Palestinian Christian community.

“The fact is that there is a church on the ground,” Deatherage said. “We imagine this conflict to be between Jews and Muslims, and so when people see that there are Christians there, and even Palestinian Evangelicals, they didn’t know that. I mean, there’s a Bible college in Bethlehem, where people talk about their faith the very same way they do, they read the same books, many of them studied in the same universities in the U.S.”

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