Trump and his move to shift US Embassy to Jerusalem

A Palestinian Muslim worshipper prays in front of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound – AFP

By Latheef Farook

In a move aimed at recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the newly-elected United States President Donald Trump has pledged to shift the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 

This is not something unexpected in view of the power of pro-Israeli Jewish lobbies in the US where presidents are made and unmade by these lobbies. Any US presidential candidate need to first sell his soul to these lobbies and their corporate conglomerates before they even dream of entering White House.

Once elected and installed in office as president he should obediently implement the designs of Israel, however evil they are.

This was proved by US presidents in the past few decades. This includes former President Barack Obama regarded as the most pro-Israeli president who shamelessly defended Israeli war crimes and implemented its agenda against Muslim world.

This is what President Donald Trump who seems to be a stronger supporter of Israel than Barack Obama and quite open about his extreme hostility towards Islam and Muslims is doing now.

Indifferent to Muslims

It was as part of this policy President Trump wanted to shift the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He doesn’t care about hurting the religious sentiments of around 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. All he wants to do is please the Jewish lobbies by pitting US interest which he claims to protect against Muslims worldwide.

He knows that the Muslim response will be nothing more than a few statements and street demonstrations. These Muslim countries, especially those in the Middle East, are ruled by bunch of corrupt, degenerate and rotten-to-the-core dictators who would do nothing to assert their rights and dignity as their regimes depend on US sympathy for survival. He also knows very well that these shameless Arab dictators who hide their countries’ robbed wealth in the US, UK and Europe would not lift a finger to save Jerusalem and place their own interest in peril.

These dictators were installed in power by US, UK, France and Russia in collaboration with Israel and thus their inevitable loyalty has been to their Western Judeo-Christian masters.

In fact West Jerusalem was not given to Israel under the 1947 United Nations illegal partition plan which created the evil entity of Israel which, since then, has turned the entire Middle East into a killing field. West Jerusalem was grabbed by violent force, with the blessings and support of US, Britain, France and Russia, as the Zionists grabbed the rest of Palestine with the blessings and support of same countries.

East Jerusalem was brought under Zionist control during the June 1967 US-European-backed Israeli war of aggression against Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Since then Israel not only unleashed barbarity against Palestinians living in and around East Jerusalem but also began its Judaisation program of East Jerusalem with settlements for Jews brought in especially from US, Europe and Russia. 

In 1980 East Jerusalem was effectively annexed by Israel, an act internationally condemned. East Jerusalem was later integrated into Jerusalem by extension of its municipal borders and was placed under the law, jurisdiction and administration of the Israel. In a unanimous General Assembly resolution, the UN declared the measures trying to change the status of the city invalid.

United States and Jerusalem

In 1990 the US Senate adopted a resolution “acknowledging Jerusalem as Israel’s capital” stating that it “strongly believes that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city”. 

In 1991, however, US Secretary of State James Baker stated that the US is “opposed to the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem and the extension of Israeli law on it and the extension of Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries”. Historically, the US had viewed East Jerusalem as forming part of the West Bank, a territory under belligerent occupation.

Nevertheless, the subsequent Clinton administration refused to characterise East Jerusalem as being under occupation and viewed it as a territory over which sovereignty was undefined. Vice President Al Gore stated that the US viewed “united Jerusalem” as the capital of Israel. In light of this designation, the US has since abstained from Security Council resolutions which use language which construes East Jerusalem as forming part of the West Bank. 

In 1995, Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act which declared that Jerusalem should remain undivided and that it should be recognised as Israel’s capital. In 2016, Donald Trump vowed to recognise all of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.

What has the Muslim world, especially those countries in the Middle East, done to free Jerusalem? 

Fifty years later today one could conclude that “they have done nothing”.

All they did was to meet in the poverty-stricken Moroccan capital of Casablanca in a glittering conference hall to pass resolutions asking the international community to get Israel to withdraw from East Jerusalem. Israel and its US and European collaborators knew very well that these were empty slogans to hoodwink their own people. This deceptive and futile drama continued until the 1990/91 Kuwaiti crisis triggered by the US-engineered Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Since then Israel and its war partners such as US, UK, France and Russia, turned the entire Middle East into killing fields. Today the Middle East is in disarray. They invaded one country after another and bombed them into wastelands, killing millions of innocent people besides sending many more millions into refugee camps.

In the process the Arab dictators struggling for their survival abandoned the Palestinians, Jerusalem and Masjid Al Aqsa. These dictators even began establishing open and secret ties with Israel. Saudi Arabia and other oil rich Gulf countries, Jordan and even Palestinian Authority collaborated with Israel in its war, for example, in bombing, destroying, killing and starving Palestinians in Gaza. 

Exploiting the chaos in the region, Israel intensified its Jews-only settlements in and around Jerusalem, of course with the support of US and Europe though they continue to state that they are illegal. Israel also began to destroy Masjid Al Aqsa by undertaking what it described as archaeological excavations just beneath Masjid Al Aqsa.

Passionate appeal to Muslims

During his brief visit to Bahrain on Monday 16 November 1998 Sheikh Ekrima Sa’ad Sabri, the chief preacher at Masjid Al Aqsa, made a passionate appeal to Muslims all over to come forward and save Masjid Al Aqsa and Jerusalem from the Zionists and thereby safeguard their rights and dignity.

In an emotional plea during an interview with me in Bahrain Sheikh Ekrima said: “Jerusalem which Allah declared as a Muslim city from the day the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was taken on the journey to heaven ‘Al Isra Al Miraj’ is in danger.” He warned that failure to save it would be disastrous as it would expose other religious places including the Holy Cities of Makkah and Madina to Zionist designs. 

He said Israelis continue to dig under Masjid Al Aqsa and other residential districts in the old city to pave the way for the automatic collapse of Masjid Al Aqsa and other buildings of religious importance. Israelis have been changing the Islamic characteristic of the city almost on a daily basis and many of Jerusalem’s Islamic landmarks have been falling down and disappearing one after the other. 

Therefore, it is the religious duty of Muslims worldwide to do everything possible to free this city from Zionist Jewish control, pleaded Sheikh Ikrima. However this appeal fell on the deaf ears of Arab dictators.

Almost 20 years later today, the situation is worse as Israel often imposes severe restrictions on access to the mosque for Palestinian Muslims living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian males must be married and at least 55 years of age and women must be married and at least 45 years of age to enter the Masjid. Palestinian visits are therefore rare during most of the year, except during the month of Ramadan. 

It is in this politically-charged environment that President Donald Trump wants to shift the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. However this move may lead to unpredictable disastrous consequences especially in the context of the death and destruction caused by the US with its senseless wars in the Middle East to create Greater Israel.