Christian and Muslim beliefs have many aspects in common. Judaism too shares many beliefs with Islam. In the Qur’an, God relates that Muslims share the same faith with the People of the Book and that they say to them “We have faith in what has been sent down to us and what was sent down to you. Our God and your God are one and we submit to Him.” (Surat al-‘Ankabut, 46)

All true adherents of these three great religions:

- believe that God has created the entire universe out of nothing and that He dominates all that exists with His omnipotence.

- believe that God has created man and living things in a miraculous way and that man possesses a soul granted him by God.

- believe in resurrection, Heaven and Hell and angels, and that God has created our lives with a certain destiny.

- believe that besides the Prophets Jesus (as), Moses (as) or Muhammad (as), God sent many prophets including the Prophets Noah (as), Abraham (as), Isaac (as) and Joseph (as) throughout history, and they love all these prophets. In one verse, that Muslims make no distinction among prophets is related as follows:

The Messenger believes in what has been sent down to him by his Lord, and so do the believers. Each one believes in Allah and His angels and His Books and His Messengers. We do not differentiate between any of His Messengers. They say, ‘We hear and we obey. Forgive us, our Lord! You are our journey’s end.’ (Surat al-Baqara, 285)

The beliefs of the People of the Book are in harmony with Muslims, not only in terms of faith-related issues, but also of moral values. Today, in a world where such immoralities as adultery, homosexuality, drug addiction and a model of egoism and self-seeking cruelty have grown widespread, the People of the Book – Christians, Jews – and Muslims share the same virtues: Honor, chastity, humility, self-sacrifice, honesty, compassion, mercy and unconditional love.

Burcu Cekmece

Building Bridges – Istanbul, Turkey

http://en.a9.com.tr/video/97/Building-Bridges-Gateway/

A power and influence that put the Palestinians and behind them the 380 million Arabs at a disadvantage, however that should not be an excuses for the failings and incompetence of Palestinian leadership past Hajj Amin Hussaini, Yasser Arafat and now Mahmoud Abbas and Khalid Mishal.

One can understand and appreciate the power Israel and its Fifth Column play within the United States of America with power and influence over every aspect of life emerging as clear and present danger to the domestic and international security of the country.

While Israel leadership always had a focused mission of total and unconditional commitment to the safety, security, existence and expansion of Israel by all means including blackmailing, false flags terrorists attacks and penetrating the inner circles of the highest level of national security of Western democracies, the Palestinian leadership past and present continued to be bogged down with its own self serving and perpetuation and have lost focus on Palestine, on the Rights of Return and Jerusalem long long time ago.

Too bad for the Palestinians under the continued Jewish Occupation and in the Diaspora. The Palestinian leadership certainly of the PLO have proved over time that it is incompetent to lead, unfit to manage, too corrupt to have any credibility and simply if not an agent of the Israeli Occupation at least manager of the Jewish Occupation, a criminal mafia at best.

While the British Mandate was meeting its mission of helping and facilitating the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine and was doing all it can through arrests, executions and suppressions of civil demonstration, the Palestinian leadership of the time was simply inept and hardly knew what was going on and with no vision or focused credible policies for resisting both the British Mandate and the emerging powerful Jewish terrorists groups.

No one can deny the sacrifice of the many who took up arms, who died and who were executed and imprisoned resisting both the Mandate, and the ever increasing Jewish Occupation, the Palestinians leadership like the present one was more concerned with perpetuating its powers and influence rather than meeting the challenge coming from Europe and the US. Simply the Palestinian leadership and the population of the time were no match to the Zionist leadership and the well educated and well trained Jewish immigrants with focused mission to set a Jewish state no matter what are the costs or consequences for the Palestinians.

The late Yasser Arafat was no match for Ben Gurion, not in vision or dedication to the cause, While the latter made good use of close inner circles of smart professional people to help him build a new state, securing financial, military, political and technical support for the new emerging state, Arafat on the other hand gathered around him a bunch of misfit, unfit, incompetent, corrupt, a mafia of self serving cadre of followers committed and loyal to his leadership and securing their private privileges that Arafat was master at dispensing using blackmail to make sure every one is in line and never challenge his leadership. The Palestine National Congress was nothing but a shameful body and a disgrace failing the Palestinians as the leadership of Arafat and his cronies.

That is why after so many years of same leadership, and with hundreds of thousands of dead and martyrs and tens of billions disappeared, wasted, looted and remain unaccounted for, Yasser Arafat and the PLO having failed at every thing (liberation and establishing a state) he and his failed corrupt and incompetent entourage came back to manage the Jewish Occupation as a way to save a failed leadership.

While Israeli leaders travel the world succeeding in suppressing complaint about continued expansion of Jewish settlements, expropriations of land for the Apartheid Wall and Jewish Roads only, and an ever expansions of so called security checkpoints, and constant violations of international law, Palestinian leadership is traveling the world earning traveling miles, enjoying the finest in hotel and dinning, without ever achieving any material change for the people under the Jewish Occupation, with a very speedy rate to disfranchise and ethnically cleansing Arab Palestinians from Jerusalem. Land swap, not the return of the refugees, not Jerusalem is the agenda for continued negotiations.

While the Israeli and Jewish leadership looks after its own around the world, discovering even inventing lost tribes, seeking and enticing such lost tribes to immigrate to Israel, the Palestinian leadership of Arafat and Abbas totally abandoned, gave up any credible efforts to look after and serve Diaspora Palestinians. As we have seen in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Kuwait, in Syria among other countries.

While the Jewish Agency was looking after Jewish communities around the world, the Palestine Liberation Organization as the claimed “representatives of the Palestinian people” overlooked even disregarded the needs of all Palestinians in the Diaspora, specially those under attacks in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

The Jewish Agency working together with international Zionist organizations like the American Jewish Congress organized and sought and succeeded in total recovery of Jewish properties in Europe, the PLO did not bother to organize an alliance of international organizations to document or build a data base and filing the necessary legal challenges and proceedings to recover All Palestinian properties confiscated by the newly arriving Jewish immigrants. In fact it stands in the way of such efforts because it seeks compensations to go its own coffer to dispense with it as it chooses with majority of recovered funds ending up in private bank accounts.

Now that the Palestinian leadership claimed a one time success of having Palestine recognized as an observer state at the UN, it promised in exchange for sitting down with the Israelis to negotiate and give away what is left of Palestine, it will not file any international legal charges against Israel for its criminal actions of the wars on Gaza, the building of the Apartheid Wall, the continued confiscations and expansions of Jewish settlements on stolen Palestinians lands, the policies of administrative arrests without trial or evidence that saw more than 700,000 Palestinians guests of Israeli jails. I guess to the Palestinian leadership there is a price for its continued existence and that price is Palestine and its people. If the past is a guide to the future I doubt if Palestinians will ever take charge of their own destiny and throw this failed leadership out once and for all, and give themselves an even chance.

The Reagan administration with intellectual and philosophical advocacy from NeoCons think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute and in fulfillment of its objective to wage overt and covert war on Communism and with the support (certainly generous financial payments) to Arab and Muslim governments began to recruits all the misfits, radicals and lost generation to fights its war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

The “Mujahiddeen “ war in Afghanistan is and will remain the incubator of “Islamist’ terrorism and the radicalization of so many young Muslims who are now engaged in and are waging a war of terror against Muslims and Islam in countries like Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in India, Kashmir, Somalia, Iraq, and recently in Tunisia.

Assisting this international war on Islam are “radical” clergymen who are doing their best to emulate the Rabbis of Christ time and are doing their best to take over the “Temple’ and every thing in it and are working very hard for the “Talmudization” of Islam and trying to shape Islam and Islamic Civilization’s in their own image of ignorance, and intolerance. Promoting and sad to say “winning” the “sectarian wars” in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in Syria.

They have been waging verbal and armed war in mosques all over the Muslim world anointing themselves as leaders of the “Ummah” when in fact they lack all the intellectual and reglious credentials to lead such “Ummah”, let alone a mosque.

Any one these days with a shaved head and a long beard can claim to be an “ Islamist leader” gathering around themselves unemployed failed misfits who have been left out and marginalized by society. These so called “Emir” truly think of themselves as “Prince’s of Believers” moving around in motorcades with armed guards, and processions fits for a Mafiosi’s and acting like criminal gang leaders of Los Angeles and Chicago.

If America ‘s war on Islam in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iraq has caused the direct death of hundreds of thousand, then the “Takfiri/Jihadist” war on Islam and Muslims has caused a number far exceed these modest figures. Always directing their acts of terror toward poor neighborhoods and innocent bystanders.

No one should discount the monstrous evil produced by the “madras’s” in Pakistan and in Afghanistan on the radicalization of young generations with no hope for decent life or future. If these young people have a stake in society, with good education, good jobs and good future for themselves and their families they will not go out and blow themselves not for Allah certainly not for Mohamed (PBUH), but will rebuild their societies not destroy it.

In this day and age, ignorant ill educated clergymen have anointed themselves as guardians of the faithful handing “fatwa’s” left and right determining who is a Muslim of good standing and who is not going dangerously further handing down “death” sentences against those who do no see them as the personification of pure Islam, with a “Sharia” that does not go beyond “sex and booze”.

These “Jihadists and Takfiri” leaders and groups are indeed the hidden armies of the likes of Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Pam Gellar and “false flag terrorism” who have made a career out of promoting and advocating “Islamophobia” and war on terror.

In Syria, the presence of Islamist recruits (Jabhat Al-Nusra) related to or associated with Alqaeda has undermined the Syrian people’s uprising and winning the war against the criminal regime of Bashar Assad.

All Arab criminal regimes past and present have supported US waging war on Communism and now these veterans of the Mujahideen war came back to undermine these regimes and to recruit, poor, unemployed, ignorant and illiterates to its ranks using drugs and smugglings with covert support from Western intelligence sources in support of its international war on terror (Islam).

The Takfiri /Jihadists never contributed to life but waged wars of death and destructions against innocent and poor people and never build a clinic, or a school, or social service centers, training centers for women, believing these services as undermining the purity of Islam and an emulation of decadent Western civilization.

If such people existed in early Islam I am sure Islam would have died in its infancy and would have never gone beyond Medina. May Allah save Islam, Muslims and the world from these evil, criminal and terrorists who are the biggest threats to Islam and Muslims? The great Islamic Civilization spanning the glob was not build by “Takfiri/Jihadists” but built by intellectuals, scientists, mathematicians, architects, artists, philosophers, religious scholars, not Shiites not Sunnis, but Muslims of all colors, race and nationalities. Islam was and is enriched by such diversity and cross-cultures.

Contrary to public claims, the Palestinian leadership past (Arafat) and present (Abbas) was never interested in liberation, let alone ending the Jewish Occupation. Oslo and subsequent actions since then can only confirm this. It is all about business and the windfall the continued Jewish Occupations brings to the Palestinian leadership, leaders and cadre of “Fasa’el” and of course to the Palestinian Oligarchs.

The Palestinian leadership never put in place a popular plan (civil disobedience and popular civil uprising) that will help bring about the end of the longest occupation in modern history. Rather the Palestinian leadership is working hard to perpetuate its existence even if more and more land is taken over for Jewish settlements and security areas.

While the likes of Dr. Mohmoud Ishtayeh, Fatah leader in Nablus denounce such meeting with the likes of Rami Levy, the owner of the largest supermarkets in Jewish Settlements, his boss Mahmoud Abbas dispatch his top economic aid to attend such meeting, a meeting that also saw the attendance of Amr Mousa of Egypt and Abdesalam Almajali the former Jordanian foreign minister and Robert Serry the UN coordinator.

The meeting that took place in the home of Palestinian billionaire Munib Almasri was dubbed” breaking the freeze”, with the idea of creating a” coalition of Arab and Israeli ‘Notables’ working together to move forward the Arab Peace process.

Last April 25, 2013 Secretary of State John Kerry announced such plans after receiving the green light from Bibi Netanyahu. The “economic initiatives” is to induce big international corporations to invest in projects in the “occupied territories” in infrastructures, high technology and transportation in addition to telecommunications.

Not so sure how this plan will work when Israel have over 550 different security check points almost every few kilometers where Palestinians are horded like Texas cattle’s as they are processed through metal revolving gates and where many women died while waiting to go to a clinic on the other side and where Palestinians have to wait hours if not days to pass through.

Israel not only hinder Palestinians access to their homes and farms it does not allow a G3 applications and signs pointing this issue went up during President Barack Obama brief visit to Ramallah.

When Arafat and the PLO leadership came back to Ramallah to manage the Jewish Occupation, Arafat unlike drunken Yeltsin, a sober Arafat gave the Palestinian Oligarchs the run on all key economies and went further by giving certain security officials a monopoly on certain energy sectors resulting in the milking of hundreds of millions of dollars from poor consumers. Arafat corrupted the entire economy of the Occupied Territories.

More troubling is the lack of any credible plans by the Palestinians leadership to disengage from the Israeli economy. Dr. Nabil Sha’ath who negotiated the Paris Agreement did not do such a good job perpetuating the overwhelming control of Israel of all economic aspects in the Occupied Territories.

Over the years and since Oslo and with a lack of both a political let alone economic plans, the Palestinian leadership and authority made the rich richer and the poor much much poorer.

The biggest beneficiary of the budget goes to the Palestinian Security forces (35%) much more than the combined budget for health, education, transportation and social services. Keep in mind that such security forces could not and dare not protect Palestinian villages from the daily attacks by armed Jewish settler terrorists. Who come as they wish vandalize mosques and churches, destroy farms, uproot century old olive trees and poisoning water well, all under the closed eyes of the Palestinian security forces established to protect the Occupation and the Ramallah regime.

Prior to the Second Intifada, Israel became the largest single employer of Palestinian labors and the Palestinian leadership was only too happy for being the largest and key labor suppliers of unskilled labor to Israel and never thought of an alternative plans.

The Palestinian leadership failed at every thing it set out to do. It failed at liberation, it failed at ending the occupation, failed at building governing institutions, failed at disengaging Palestinian economy from the Israeli economy, failed at ending the continued expansion of Jewish settlements, failed at bringing down the Apartheid Wall (though it had a court ruling), failed at creating a transparent and clean government with corruption, “connections and nepotism” and fleecing of citizens at the different key agency continue to be the rule.

The only beneficiaries of such “breaking the freeze” or “economic initiatives” are the Palestinian Oligarchs who already have chocking hold on key economies while hundreds of thousands of people remain below poverty lines and with hundreds of thousand remain hostage to the monthly salary and the monthly mortgage and consumers loans.

Not so sure what would be the economic benefits to the people when Coca-Cola commits to investing a billion dollars and who but the owners of the franchise are the beneficiaries.

Already the Arab League is behind such an “economic initiatives” and recently gave Israel added incentives allowing the trade off of prime Palestinian territories in exchange for toxic waste dump. With this present leadership there is no hope forever ending the Jewish Occupation.

The leadership, its allies in the business community and in the NGO networks are the prime beneficiaries of the continued Jewish Occupation and the “economic initiative” is an added reward to a Palestinian leadership that failed at every thing.

More troubling is the commitment made with the approval of the Palestinian leadership that “Palestine” will never file legal charges against Israel for past, present and future crimes.

I am sure the hundreds of thousands of young and old, rich and poor, ideologically free who went to the streets and took down the regimes of Bin Ali and Hosni Mubarak and Muamar Qaddafi, little did they know their hard work is hijacked by “leaders” and “followers” that best can be described unfit to lead and unqualified to govern and take the countries forward, rebuilding nations people and infrastructures destroyed by decades of corruptions, police state and failing institutions.

These “secularist/nationalists” and “salafi/islamists”, and the likes of Daniel Pipes and that other pseudo intellectuals like the creep Bernard Henry Levy should know they did not bring about the Arab Spring, in fact they have nothing to do with it all.

The Arab Spring was born out of the people desire to be free, to have a quality, decent respectable life, free from fear of the knock on the door in the middle of the night, free from fear to go to jail sentenced by a judicial systems at best corrupt, unjust and at the pecking of the president, the ruling party and intelligence service. A decent house and a decent job, a future for their families and a place under the sun.

The thousands who died did not die waiting for creeps and veggie-intellectuals the likes of Bernard Levy or Daniel Pipes to bring about democracy and good governance to the Arab countries. Not Arabs, not Americans, not Europeans want or desire a democracy seeded in Zionist ideologies and corrupting financial and political systems that are destroying societies and nations from within. What an insult for the hundreds of millions of Arabs to have these two Zionists think they are the “intellect” behind the Arab Spring.

The thousands who died and went to jail did not wait for the “secularist/nationalists” whose failures, in fact whose support for dictatorial regimes in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen brought about failing states and kelpto-dictatorship. While the Brothers went to jail, Egyptians so called “intellectuals” were heading almost all government institutions from radio and TV to national newspapers, national publications and were spreading the lies that kept Mubarak regime going for decades.

The thousands who died and the millions who took to the streets in defiance of the police and bullets did not go out so that “salafi/islamists” can go out and take the laws in their hands and determine who is a pious righteous citizen and form a nation in their own ugly dark vision.

The young and the brave Egyptians did not bring down the regime so that Egypt can be ruled by “fatwa’s” from many unfit, unlearned if not misfits who are sawing the seeds of anarchy and sectarianism. The young revolutionaries did not bring down regimes to have the state substitute one ‘secular corrupt police” with a “ religious virtue police” whose interests and understanding of the state and people does not go beyond “sex and booze”.

The biggest danger facing “Arab Spring” and citizens of states like Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, certainly Syria is not American imperialism but Sunni Salafi terrorists whom in the case of Syria are the biggest danger and threat to the Syrian revolution and uprising and its chance of bring down Bashar and his criminal regime.

Al-Nusra and Alqaeda never contributed any good to the renaissance of the Arab or Muslim states and their agenda if any thing is questionable funded by certain evil forces from within the Muslim world Zionist related mafia, and from drug money generated in the opium fields of “Mujahideen and Taliban” and the cocaine trafficking in Sub-Sahara and separatists forces operating within Algeria, Mali and the Sahara.

Too bad for the citizens of these states, whether Arabs, Berber, Kurds, Muslims, Christians and Jews, religious and secular the “salafi” terrorists movements are the biggest threat to what we know today as Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq. These “salafi” terrorists are sowing the seeds of hate and ‘sectarian’ strife in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq and are committing terrorists and murderous acts whose victims are innocent people. And in Libya they are the one standing in the way or rebuilding the nation.

Not so sure if these ‘salafis” in Tunisia, or Egypt, or Iraq or Libya or Syria ever contributed money or efforts to building a school, a clinic, perhaps a bakery or social clinics let alone a factory to employ people or sport centers or rehabilitation clinic or vocational schools or a library or a science museum. The only thing they are capable of doing is killing and committing cold blood murders of innocent people and destroying nations with the hope of bringing about a retarded backward “jahylia/ ignorance” Islamic state

One has to always questions how do these “salafi terrorists” get their funding to buy arms and weapons to attack and kill and destroy and to travel the “jihad route”.

These “Islamist terrorists” with their acts and vengeance and their ugly dark vision of an “Islamist” state shares common interests with America’s imperialism and Israeli Zionism in their conspiracy to abort the Arab Spring.

Let all these Islamist Jihadist and terrorists go back to their home countries and let the Syrian people fight for their future. If America and Israel succeeded in one thing, they did succeed in nourishing and nurturing “Islamic terrorism” starting with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the source of all evil and terrorism in the Muslim world. I am sure the Arab and Muslim world would be much better off if the Mujahideens and Taliban’s were defeated by the Soviets.

While much appreciated and welcomed the suggestions of the Emir of Qatar to set up a one billions dollar for Jerusalem may be little too late to save the Muslim and Christian nature of Jerusalem and its international character. Jerusalem a city for the world for Jews, Muslims and Christians and must not be must be entrusted to the likes of Bibi Netanyahu or Mahmoud Abbas.

It will be a big and fatal mistake on the part of the Arab states to entrust the PLO and Palestinian leadership with such funds. The PLO history is riddle with corruption, mismanagement and the looting of tens of billions of the people money. The leadership past and present was never held accountable for the funds entrusted to it over the years, and never made full accounting of its operation let alone published personal financial statements of the leadership and key Fatah and government officials.

Notwithstanding claims by the leadership to go after corruption and corrupt officials, those who looted hundreds of millions of the official budgets since Oslo hardly any one was ever brought to court and hardly anyone ever convicted let alone was there a public proceeding. In the old Arabic saying “Hameeha Harameeha” in other word “those entrusted to guard end up being the thieves”.

Over the years and since the Israeli Occupation of 67 East Jerusalem which was annexed by Israel shortly after the war was totally neglected and abandoned by the Palestinian leadership if not by the Arabs and Muslims with the international Christian leadership paying lip service to the protections of Christian rights and Christian nature of the city.

It was in July of 75 when the Organization of Islamic Cooperation set up a permanent committee “Jerusalem Committee” headed by the late King of Morocco and continues to be headed by his son King Mohamed VI of Morocco, with the purpose of “ to salvage the City of Alquds Alsharif” and “ extend assistance to the Palestinian population and Palestinian institutions in the holy capital and “ to safe guard and restore the Alaqsa Mosque and other holy sites in the city as well” and to maintain “ the cultural religious and architectural heritage of the city”.

Morocco as head of the committee has been active in not only raising funds for the city to meet such mission however the kind of funding city needs is way beyond what is raised annually. And thanks the Palestinian leadership is neither in charge of the money nor its distribution.

I say the Palestinian leadership past and present is not fit nor qualified to take responsibility for Jerusalem for good reasons. The leadership while outside of Occupied Palestine did not make the needed efforts to provide the leadership needed to help maintained the Arabs (Muslim and Christian) character of the city, in Oslo it gave up all pretences to do that.

The Palestinian leadership of the PLO never gave Jerusalem the priority it urgently needed and in Oslo it simply waived all rights in Jerusalem in favor of the town of Abu-Dis, the home city of Ahmed Quari who headed the Oslo negotiations and who was the brain or lack of it, behind dividing the Palestinian territories into different area and different categories (A, B, C and A1) all of which allowed Israel to legally solidified its hold over Jerusalem.

The Palestinian negotiators having secured the different classification of the land went ahead and purchased large tracks of the land on the cheap in Abu-Dis building investment properties with the pretence it will be needed for the future capital of Palestine. What no one dares to say is that Abu-Dis is the “Jerusalem” capital of the State of Palestine if and when Israel decides to do so. East Jerusalem and its people were never a priority in Oslo.

The Arabs, Palestinians, Muslims and Jews all should be reminded of the statement of Saeb Erekat head of the PLO negotiation team when he promised to Israel the “biggest Yureshalem” in Jewish history

The PLO/Palestinian leadership totally neglected to give the city or its Palestinian residents any support in their fight against aggressive Israeli policy of “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem” by denying funding to the legal committee that represents the Palestinians in their fights against confiscation of property and house demolition.

Such failure forced Hatem Abdel Qader the “minister of Jerusalem Affairs” in Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayad government to submit his resignation back in 2009 claiming the leadership and the PA “ contributes nothing to the efforts to keep residence on the land” and “ treasury does not pay the legal fees to the lawyers in their legal campaign against Israeli demolition”. Perhaps the saving from business expenses of the leadership functionaries in restaurants and bars in Ramallah can cover such expenses.

Since Oslo more than 70,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from East Jerusalem. Even till today, the Palestinian leadership never bothered to appoint a credible and well-known personality to take the lead on Jerusalem with power, authority and funds to match the task he/she faces.

Of course Arab East Jerusalem have to fend for themselves and have to fend against powerful criminal Jewish settlers and trespassers generously supported and funded by drug, prostitutions and gambling money from rich and powerful American Jewish donors, with the Israeli courts providing the legal cover for such criminal activities such as forgery and grand slam theft of Arab properties right under the eyes of the US and the “international community” that funds such occupation.

Like in so many criminal regimes, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and many dictatorships around the world, Israel is not exception when it comes to the use of “the laws” to implement its policy to confiscate Palestinian properties and exile Palestinians. There are too many laws that allow Israel to do this “legally” just like the Nazis who used the “laws” to deprive Jews of their properties and even their lives.

Among these laws are the “Emergency Regulations”, “Security Zones”, “Absentees Property Law” to the “Abandoned Areas Ordinance” all of which permit the State of Israel to throw the people off their land, declare them absent and declare the areas as abandoned and then legally take over Palestinian properties. No doubt a lesson learned from a history of prosecution.

Now back to the announcement of the Emir of Qatar and the setting up of a One Billion dollar fund for Jerusalem. First of all the Palestinian leadership and the PLO must not be part of the plan and must not be entrusted with the fund or the policy.

It is best that the Arab states set up an “executive committee” of three well-known personalities from the Arab world (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) to manage the funds and to set up the policies and become the advocated for a “Jerusalem for All”.

The committee should seek the assistance and support of well qualified team of international lawyers and public relation companies to help it in its efforts and duties, and should set up and organize an international day of “Jerusalem for All” and convene an international forum of world leaders Christians, Muslims and Jews perhaps in Rome perhaps in Washington within hearing distance from Congress with millions attending rallies calling for and demanding a “Jerusalem for All”, open and united for the billions of people around the world.

President Obama should ask the question how many more have to die before the US does the right thing and view the conflict as an international conflict not a domestic issue? The prerogative of self serving Jewish leadership and Jewish lobby with interests to keep the blood flowing to keep the money flowing to perpetuate its powers and control over America.

The US is the sponsor of Israel’s war crimes, ethnic cleansings, home demolitions, detentions without charges and without trial, land theft, fraudulent acquisitions of Arab properties, the exiles of tens of thousand of Palestinians from Jerusalem, under different forms of Israeli discriminatory laws, the daily humiliations of millions of Palestinians at the more than 550 different security check points, the “Jewish” roads only, Jewish only neighborhoods and towns, the Apartheid Wall and of course the ever expanding Jewish settlements on stolen Arab lands. No need to mention here the Hill Top Jews made up mostly of American Jewish misfits and criminal gangs funded by tax-exempt contributions of American Jewish terrorists groups. Indeed the US is the sole sponosor of the longest foreign occupation of modern times.

But for the United States and its total unconditional support for Israel (Rights and Wrong) Israel and the Palestinians, in fact Israel and the entire Arab and Muslim worlds could have reached peace agreements long long time ago, saving the lives of Jews, Arabs, Muslims and Americans.

Since the founding of Israel by a decision of the United Nation, the US gave Israel the military, diplomatic and legal support it needed to wage continuous wars against its neighbors killing and murdering hundreds of thousands of Arabs in Palestine, in Jordan, in Lebanon extending its evil and criminal arms as far as Tunisia and Iraq.

Contrary to the lies we hear from the White House and State, the United States was never an honest fair “peace broker” between Israel and the Palestinians and have always supported Israel and its unilateral decisions after Oslo, and its invasions of Lebanon and the continued Occupation of South Lebanon for over 20 years in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. Supported Israel in its defiance of all UN resolutions. The only country to do so and get away with it.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese killed and murdered and entire towns destroyed and thousands imprisoned in Israeli “camps” in South Lebanon where Israel exercised the worst systematic torture unseen since WWII while the US looked the other way even blocking the implementations of UN Security Council resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from South Lebanon. And have looked the other way while Israel and its allied the Christian Phalange committed the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. But for the Israeli invasions of Lebanon with green light from Reagan and Haig, hundreds of US would not have died.

Israel with legal and diplomatic cover from the US executed hundreds of Egyptians war prisoners and committed the targeted assassinations of hundreds of Palestinians using drones and US made helicopters and fighter jets, with not even a word of protest against the use of US made weapons.

The two wars on Gaza reminds us and the world, the hypocrisy and indifference of the US as Israel waged its merciless destructions of Gaza destroying the infrastructures including hospitals and schools and tens of thousands of homes, all in the name of self defense while denying the Palestinians the same rights to self defense against the daily Israeli crimes.

Jerusalem is where Israel contrary to international laws, not only annexed East Jerusalem, but went on to rob the Palestinians of their homes denying them “legal” residency, Palestinians who can traced their residency in Jerusalem for thousands of years forced into exile to make rooms for “immigrant” of dubious Jewish origin to take their place.

The US contrary to its “principled” values of freedom, liberty equal rights and self determinations, all these simply goes out of the window when these rights are claimed by Palestinians.

The Rights of Self Determination enshrined in all UN resolutions and statues are simply denied to the Palestinians while accepted for the people across the globe and of course the answer is simple. When it comes to Israel, thanks to the US all international laws and principals become irrelevant.

As President Barack Obama heads to Jerusalem he should keep in mind that Jerusalem is not simply another city, nor a claimed capital of Israel but a Jerusalem for All belong to billions of Christians, Jews and Muslims and must not be entrusted to the likes of Bibi Netanyahu or Mahmoud Abbas, certainly must not be entrusted to guys like Joseph Lieberman and Ahmed Qurai let alone to some one like Saeb Eurekat who perhaps for a promise of a few VIP passes promised Israel the “ biggest Yerushalayim” in Jewish history”.

Contrary to what one would expect, the Palestinian leadership of the PLO and the PA is simply unfit and unqualified to represent the Arabs and billions of Muslims when it comes to Jerusalem. This leadership simply never lived up to its responsibility for the Palestinians of East Jerusalem certainly unfit to represent the interests of Christian Arabs and billions of Muslims.

Jerusalem, united, without borders and without barbed wires is a city of the world belongs to Jews, to Christians and to Muslims and it will be a crime to ever divide the city again. And it will be a bigger world crime if left to the present Israeli and Palestinian leaderships.

The world is looking for President Barack Obama to take the lead and muster the courage, stand for America’s values, stand up to the American Jewish leadership and AIPAC and either become a true honest fair just broker or step out of the way and stop providing the cover that keeps Jews and Arabs from ever achieving peace. Time for America to stop contributing to the blood spelling of Jews and Arabs and yes, Americans.

Mr. Obama, your visit came too late to save the much talked about “ Two State Solution”. The United States, Israel and the PLO leadership all contributed to varying degrees to the demise of the Two State Solution. The only way forward is a One State for all of its people. That is the only and final solution.

The recent report issued by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction released few days ago is an indictment of the failures of Congress, the White House, the Pentagon and the State doing their job and the mishandling of reconstruction with over $60 Billions simply wasted. Add to this the over $90 Billions for reconstruction of Afghanistan, with Afghanistan looking worst now than before the invasion.

This is not a few millions here; this is $60 Billions, no small sum of money by any mean. This report coincided with the BBC-The Guardian recent report of US military partnership and management of training sectarian militias that simply killed, murdered and tortured Iraqis engaging in systematic torture that should have sent military commanders including Pentagon officials right to the Hague.

It seems the Pentagon of the Axis of Evil (Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld) could not do any thing right. They enlisted war criminals who managed the “dirty wars” in Central America to manage the “insurrections” in post occupied Iraq and invited a bunch of crooks to manage the reconstruction. The US action sowed the seeds of a corrupt, sectarian and criminal regime in Iraq no different from that of the late Saddam Hussein.

According to Bob Adelmann of the New Americans the costs of the war when officially ended on December 15, 2011

“It is estimated to have costs American tax payers more than $800 billions in direct expenses and another estimated $1 trillion in additional health costs for those wounded in the war.”

Joseph Stiglitz co-author of the “ The Three Trillion War” arrived at $ 3 trillions as a conservative estimate.

Every American citizen should imagine perhaps using a calculator what a $60 Billions can do for their community, for their state certainly for their cities.

The US and for the last three decades with some minor exceptions is looking more and more like a third world country. Corrupt, incompetent with a government that is paralyzed by political ideologies and a Congress beholding to foreign lobby and corporate interests rather than taxpayers and constituents. A Congress that does nothing right anymore.

Stuart Bowen appointment (2004) was mandated by Congress “tasked with monitoring the use of funds”, and since 2009 the Special Inspector issued over twenty reports. The one issued last week was the latest and it is an indictment of the collaborative efforts between the US Military and civilian contractors. I guess no different from here at home.

In an interview on PBS with Judy Woodruff, Mr. Bowen was asked about his mission and he answered

“ To audit and inspect the programs and projects of the Coalition Provisional Authority and to provide advice and recommendations to the Congress on Iraq’s reconstructions”.

Mrs. Woodruff then followed with “ did you have an idea then of the magnitude of what you were going to be doing?”

Mr. Bowen responded

“Well the first sign of it was my first trip to Iraq in February of 2004, when I was walking the halls of the Republican Palace behind two people, and one turned to the other and said, we can’t do that any more. There’s new inspector general here. That sent me a signal that the challenges before me were quite substantial”.

Well that should have told the story and should have put both Congress, the White House and the Pentagon on “notice” that there are people out there “ Americans” playing with tens of billions of US tax dollars as “ monopoly” game.

If one is to look at Iraq now, with its destroyed and never built infrastructure, to look at its power grid line and city power connections and lines, to look at its streets that gets flooded with minor rain, to look at is neighborhood and see the utter absence of any thing new or improved. One can see what happened to these $ 60 billions.

I guess the Americans of (Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld) found themselves with equally crooked and corrupt Iraqi partnership with post Iraq Saddam, with tens of billions of Iraqi oil money went missing in make believe contracts.

If we are to compare what we did in Iraq and what happened in America with the subprime loans and collapse of the financial systems one can see that America is not what it was or used to be. The present political, economic and financial even military leadership is simply unfit and unqualified to lead this nation forward.

I conclude with this question is America too big to fail? Ah well with this kind of leadership certainly America is on its way to failure and collapse. In the words of Laurence Vance, “ the president should have proclaimed (it) a National Day of Dishonor. There is nothing honorable about the War in Iraq”.

While not discounting the active dangers of the alliance between Israel, international Zionism and its cohorts and servants within powerful political circles in almost all Western capitals, the clear and present danger facing the Arabs and Muslims are combined “Islamist’s terrorism” and the incompetence and lack of credible responsible political and civic leadership with visions and hopes for the future.

What we have witnessed in the last few weeks (actually has been going on for decades) is a surge of sectarian violence committed by suicide bombers and terrorists in Iraq, in Pakistan, in India, in Afghanistan and in Syria with hundreds, if not thousands of innocent victims. Such massive murders should raise a red flag that sectarian and political terrorist bombing are scrounge far more dangerous and destructive than any thing else facing the Arabs and Muslims.

The introduction of suicide and terrorists bombings into the political and sectarian scenes is not only undermining political and ideological reconciliations between the different competing groups and factions, but gave occupying countries such as Israel and the US the upper hand in the international public opinion damaging almost all efforts to rebuilt countries and communities shattered almost destroyed by the invading Americans and Israeli armies.

Too bad political and clerical leadership in countries like Iraq, Lebanon, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan even Yemen, Syria and Somalia, are the source of evil and cancer that is destroying the countries from within. Destroying almost forever the civil and community peace within countries well known’s for divisions along sectarian, ethnic and regional lines. In Palestine the destructive, personal and self serving feud between Fatah and Hamas leadership stands in the way of reconciliations, certainly stand in the way of ending the Jewish Occupation and liberation and independent state.

Suicide bombers do not commit such heinous crimes on their own. There are those who recruit them, those who feed them with evil, criminal religious political and ideological indoctrination. Then there are the bomb technicians who prepare the exploding device and train the potential suicide bombers to inflict maximum damage.

More criminal are those clerical and political leaders who promote and nurture such criminal acts. The families of the suicide bombers are equally guilty when they accept the notion of “martyrdom” for their sons, the sons that went out and killed scores of innocent people. When these families stop accepting condolences for their criminal sons then and just may be this scrooge will come to an end.

While the suicide bombers will for sure go directly to eternal hell, those who stood behind them are alive and planning the next mass murder of innocent people.

There is no way in hell for countries like Lebanon, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria to ever reach civil peace from within unless the people weed out and put these clerical and political leadership out of business. For the sake of the country and for the sake of the people, the women, men and children something from within has to be done. It is not a question of a political party or a sectarian group; it is a matter of human survival and value system that has disappeared some years ago.

The solutions to the conflicts in these countries lies within the very people who are the victims of such sectarian and political divisions. Once they feel the same anger at those clerics and politicians they feel about Israeli and American crimes, then and only then they may do something a bout it. To the innocent victims and their families it does make a difference that are the killers, whether they are Arabs, Muslims, Israelis or Americans.

Time to offer the people and citizens a future, something to look for, time to offer them life rather than death, time to offer them decent life here on earth not martyrdom.

Perhaps the greatest moment of the late Ronald Reagan presidency was when he gave his famous speech at Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987 and challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to “ tear down this wall”. It was only few years later that the citizens of Germany, East and West tore down the Berlin Wall without having to wait for permission from Gorbachev.

Some years ago, when I was the general counsel for a large Middle East construction company I used to travel to West Berlin almost every couple weeks to our engineering office and on few occasions I had the chance to travel and cross over to East Berlin.

And what a contrast! On my first trip to East Berlin was on a Saturday late November, cold snowy day in Berlin. As the bus stopped at Check Point Charlie the East German police directed the bus to a stop and with mirrors they inspected the undercarriage of the bus and checked both passengers and luggage very thoroughly. Founding nothing, we proceeded to the East Berlin bus station and again, what a contrast? As if the cold wintery day was not enough, the sad miserable faces of East Berliners told the story. Perhaps the most memorable moment on my first visit was not the Soviet Memorial to the fallen Red Army soldiers but the old woman carrying two bags as she walked the long lonely road with light snow falling.

On many occasions I also had a chance to cross the Israeli Apartheid Wall, a wall build by Israel not for its security from “terrorists” but to steal and rob the Palestinians from their homes and land, to rob of them of the underground aquifers thus robbing Palestinians from precious water resources and of course more importantly as a way to redefine and redraw the “provisional” borders of the “provisional” state of Palestine.

The Israeli Apartheid Wall is a racist wall that defines the Zionist cultural and moral value system of Israel. It is build to inflict maximum damage on the Palestinians and their properties and land. It separates Palestinian villagers from their land, from their only source of living, it is intended to inflict maximum humiliations on Palestinians by having them wait for hours perhaps days to get permission to attend their fields, if not confiscated by Israel for “security reasons”.

Who would believe in today’s world there is such a thing as “Jewish Only Roads”? Where Palestinians are denied the rights to use or travel such roads even though these roads are built on land and properties stolen from Palestinians? Not even the Nazis in their heydays had roads and streets designated at “ Germany Only Roads” and where Jews were denied such access.

Not sure what President Obama’s reaction will be toward this Apartheid Wall, however this should send a message to the president that the “Only democracy” in the Middle East is all about. There is nothing democratic about it.

Zionist Israel is perpetuating what Anti-Semitic governments used to do when they forced “Jews” to live in Ghettos. Now Israel on its own is building Apartheid Wall all around its borders and not only with Palestinians and creating a state ghetto. However Apartheid Walls even Zionist will never stop the winds of freedoms and liberty when the times come. And the time will come when the people Israelis and Palestinians will tear down “This Wall” even if President Obama will not dares saying it.