Is the Obama Administration able today to mediate conflict resolution between Arabs and Israelis?

The White House is hosting this week the launch of a new round of direct Mideast peace talks. Without hesitation, the Administration conveys new signs of hope and assumes the presence of regional readiness for peace making.

On the eve of a long-hoped-for meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, members of the Hamas terrorist organization killed four members of the Israeli terrorist settler movement.

The murders of the four settlers took place at Kiryat Arba in the West Bank where settlers have celebrated the memory of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the American Jewish mass murderer who killed 29 Palestinians while they were praying at the Hebron Mosque. Amazingly, he wore an Israeli military uniform and the mosque was under the control of the Israeli army.

Talk about an inside job.

This act of terror is more than just a reminder that violence takes place on both sides – yes, Israel settlers kill Palestinians, too. It should remind us of the objective of extremist Palestinians and extremists Israelis, which is to block the peace process.

It needs restating that America’s war on terror is against Al-Qaeda and not Islam. Al-Qaida is a group of terrorists using a distorted form of Islam and they have killed by far more Muslims than Christians combined. To suspect every Muslim, especially fellow citizens who are Muslims, as somehow connected to this bastardized form of Islam is itself a terrible malignment of America core values. To say that Muslims who have prayed within 12 blocks of Ground Zero for 27 years cannot pray in a neighborhood because it is too close to Ground Zero is to say the Muslims who died at the World Trade Center were not the same as the rest of the victims that horrific day.