Peloni:  It is also important to neutralize the threat from Hezbollah to help reduce any threat while attacking Iran

Hezbollah, supposedly battered and defeated, still stands and is actively rebuilding. If that is the case, what on earth has Israel been doing over the past two years? Have we merely postponed the inevitable?

by  Prof. Eyal Zisser | Feb 14, 2026

Israel’s agreement to a ceasefire in Lebanon in November 2024, at a moment when Hezbollah was reeling from the blows it had sustained, is increasingly emerging as an unfathomable missed opportunity. We had a rare chance to decisively defeat the organization long regarded here as our most formidable and certainly most dangerous enemy. The paralyzing fear of Hezbollah not only cast a heavy shadow over daily life in northern Israel, it also prevented Israel, as many will recall, from acting against Iran’s nuclear capabilities at the start of the previous decade.

Read more…

Peloni:  Herein lies the truth about the Saudi shift against normalization with Israel, but it also demonstrates a real and substantive flaw in the Abraham Accords.  The AA were intended to bring about peace by ignoring the Israeli-Pal issue, making bilateral peace agreements between Sunni states and  Israel the focus rather than waiting for the situation with the Pals to be rectified first, something which is impossible due to the terror based leadership and all of society effort at blocking any form of peace with Israel among the Pals.  But the Arab street was always something which has and continues to drive the policies of the Sunni states.  This dependency of the Sunni states on the Arab states is why Bahrain cut its diplomatic ties with Israel shortly after October 7, and why the UAE argued that Israel should not invade Gaza after October 7 and continues to argue that Hamas should not be destroyed today.  It is also why Riyadh will not formalize a commitment to the future upon which MBS has focused the future of his country.  Recognizing these facts is useful to the stability of these Sunni states, but it is also useful towards understanding the real obstruction which exists between a more stable region and what exists today, and that is the need to eradicate the control which the Muslim Brotherhood has on the Sunni states.  So, as Jonathan Feldstein noted previously, Trump’s move to ban only part of the Muslim Brotherhood is a good start, but it needs the subsequent steps to ban all the Muslim Brotherhood, not just those of less useful powers than Qatar and Turkey.

By: A. Savyon and Yigal Carmon | MEMRI | Feb 17, 2026

25th anniversary of Hamas celebrated in Gaza. By Fars Media Corporation, CC BY 4.0, Wikipedia

In his December 2, 2025 column in the London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Lebanese journalist Nadim Koteich responded to U.S. President Trump’s executive order seeking to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as terrorist organizations. Highlighting the connection between this executive order and the October 7 attack perpetrated by Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the MB, Koteich writes that “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” as Hamas calls the attack, did not harm only Israel.

Read more…

Peloni: So will Trump surrender to the demands of the Mullahs while declaring victory?  I wouldn’t bet on it.  Nothing will happen before Ramadan ends, and that won’t be til be til March 18.  This will give the Iranians time to course correct as Trump continues to assemble US forces in the region in an unprecedented show of force.  The clock is ticking and a US strike is coming, just not likely anytime soon.

Witkoff May Have Agreed to a Framework that falls outside the Trump-Rubio Parameters

Stephen Bryen | Weapons & Strategy | Feb 17, 2026

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi in Geneva for indirect talks with Iran. Screengrab via Youtube

The US-Iran “indirect” talks in Geneva lasted between 3 and 4 hours. Omani diplomats acted as intermediaries. The US delegation did not meet directly with the Iranians. Thus suggestions were carried from one side to the other, and vice versa by the Omani intermediaries.

Read more…

By Victor Sharpe

IHC Abstract from 2002

This article emphasizes how the recent Palestinian massacre of Jewish worshippers at Hebron was labeled by CNN and Associated Press as having been carried out by “militants” against “settlers”.

The writer further notes how the victims of these massacres were “shamefully made a hot potato between two leftist political rivals.” By this, he means that the deaths were a direct result of the IDFÂ’s withdrawal from the Arab occupied hills surrounding the Jewish community. This withdrawal was ordered by the ex-Israeli Defense Minister and Labor Minister in the coalition government, Benjamin ben-Eliezer, in order to win points in his battle against left wing rival Amram Mitzna for leadership of the Labor party.

Read more…

Peloni: A must see video

Video Loads below

Read more…

by Gerald A. Honigman

Recently a friend a fellow author, Victor Sharpe, alerted me to an interview by Israeli journalist Ariel Kahana with Hamas and other Arab perpetrators of the atrocities of October 7th 2023  in which it became clear that there was absolutely no remorse whatsoever for the deliberate butchery committed.

This was reminiscent of the unrepentant cruelty described in 1963, while covering the Eichmann trial in Israel and penned by Hannah Arendt, as the “Banality of Evil” referring to Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Read more…

Major arms deal strengthens strategic partnership and cements Israel’s role as a top supplier to India.

Israfan | Feb 16, 2026

SPICE 1000 and 2000 precision-guided bombs. Screengrab vua Youtube

Read more…

Peloni:  This will prove to be one of the most important achievements of this Knesset.

The government has been slowly increasing Israeli authority over Judea and Samaria in past two years

All Israel News Staff | Published: February 16, 2026

Knesset plenum at the special plenum meeting to mark the 61th anniversary of the establishment of the Knesset. By Itzik Adar, CC BY 2.5, Wikipedia

The Israeli Cabinet approved the proposal of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Justice Minister Yariv Levin to open the land registration process in Judea and Samaria on Sunday.

Read more…

A Shin Bet investigator interrogated the Hamas terrorists. It is incumbent upon each of us to read and internalize. Here are several central paragraphs:

Victor Sharpe

October 7 Collage by Hnuden – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=143009820

During the months of the war against the Hamas perpetrators of the October, 2023 Nakba massacre of Jewish men, women, children and babies in Israel, Ariel Kahana met the cruelest of these Palestinian murderers, those who committed the inconceivable crimes on October 7. ‘What stands out most, was their utmost banality.

As Hannah Arendt said, the Banality of Evil.

Read more…

Video Loads Below

Read more…

Joel C. Rosenberg | All Israel News | Published: February 15, 2026

President Donald J. Trump participate in an expanded bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House. Photo by The White House from Washington, DC – President Trump Meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Public Domain, Wikipedia

On Friday, I landed here in the American capital just about the time that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and his team were arriving back in Israel after their “emergency” trip to Washington and three-hour meeting with President Donald J. Trump.

Read more…

1. Peloni:  This is an important letter written by Morton Klein, President of ZOA in which he draws attention to the failure of Heritage Foundation’s President Kevin Roberts and Heritage foundation itself to address the close association with Tucker Carlson and the bigoted positions adopted by Carlson, despite Roberts having promised to do so more than six weeks ago.

Morton A. Klein |  Feb 15, 2026

Click Link to Read Article

https://tinyurl.com/3sux3z37

Peloni:  Setback in Califorinia using federal funding as leverage.  Trump should turn to charging these institutions with Civil Rights violations under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Law.

Jaryn Crouson Education Reporter | Daily Caller | February 16, 2026

Pro-Palestinian protest at UCLA. Screengrab via Youtube. 

The Trump administration on Friday reached an agreement with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) that requires the government to retract its $1.2 billion demand and restore millions in federal funding.

Read more…

Peloni:  The Sunni states seek to maintain Iran as the perfect counter to an even stronger Israel.  Their own weakness is what has drawn them to seek the preservation of an Islamist Iran, even if it remains as a Shia Islamist state.

Video Loads Below

Read more…

Video Loads Below

Read more…

Peloni:  None of this is new, shocking or in question.  The preference to pretend that the LAF can act against the Shia majority’s sacred cow, Hezbollah, is quite difficult to argue as being based on misconceptions, as these misconceptions continue to be leveraged to keep Hezbollah in power in Lebanon while also continue to be fed massive annuities in the form of aid at the expense of US taxpayers.  Washington needs to end the charade which keeps the terrorists in Lebanon funded.  This is the minimum which should be understood to be in the interest of Trump’s pursuit of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse, all of which have played a hand in funding the terrorists regimes in the Middle East, and continues to fund the Hezbollah aligned LAF.

David Daoud

Hezbollah. Photo by Voice of America – YouTube – View/save archived versions on archive.org and archive.today, Public Domain, Wikipedia

Some senior U.S. officials believe showering the Lebanese government with praise will hasten disarming Hezbollah.

In a statement issued on February 9, U.S. CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper lauded the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) for “recently finding a massive underground Hezbollah tunnel for the second time in the past two months.”  The tone of his comments recalled remarks made last August by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who advocated for a mutual defense agreement with the United States. But Graham’s endorsement of the LAF has now soured. Earlier this month, Graham abruptly ended a direct meeting with LAF Commander Rodolphe Haykal after the latter stated that Hezbollah was not a terrorist organization “in the context of Lebanon.”

Read more…

Peloni:  What should we expect to be included in a constitution written by terrorists?  There are no surprises here.  Perhaps Jared Kushner should read the constitution and explain how this represents either reform in the PA or their interest in achieving peace.

We’re not building a nation, we’re building a terrorist movement at war with us.

by Daniel Greenfield | Feb 16, 2026

The nation building experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq were obviously doomed when their new 2004 and 2005 ‘constitutions’ declared them to be Islamic nations based on Islamic law.

Our latest experiment in nation building, trying to create a ‘Palestinian’ state in Gaza, is going the same way. After assembling a slate of PLO officials to administer Gaza under the authority of the Board of Peace, the Islamic-Marxist terrorist group, which operates under the name of the ‘Palestinian Authority’ and calls itself the ‘State of Palestine’, announced its draft constitution.

Read more…

Peloni:  A truly joyous reckoning is taking shape, and this is only the beginning.

By Hugh Fitzgerald | Feb 14, 2026

Min. Ben Gvir and others praying at the Temple Mount.  Screengrab via Youtube 

In 1967, Israel took back by force of arms from Jordan the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount that is the holiest site in Judaism. For the first time since the 1948 war, Jews could now visit the Temple Mount. However, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan made a fateful decision, intended to lessen tensions and prevent a violent outburst from the Arabs, already smarting from their defeat in the Six-Day War. He prohibited Jews from praying, or bringing with them prayerbooks, or from wearing tefillin, when visiting the Mount. In fact, Jews were not even allowed to silently mouth prayers. Israeli police monitored the Mount and stopped any Jews who were. violating those rules.

Read more…

Peloni:  Notably, Turkey’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is one of those which the US has thus far chosen to not ban, even as Turkey continues to carry significant influence in Washington, two facts which are obviously related.  Turkey’s deep seeded connection to the Muslim Brotherhood also supports Ankara’s support for Hamas, and their naming of one of the mosques built in Gaza being named to celebrate an Islamist jihadist.  Turkey must be isolated from having any role in Gaza.

Turkey’s Diyanet Foundation opened three mosques in Gaza ahead of Ramadan, part of Ankara’s broader effort to expand religious and political influence in the enclave.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN | FEBRUARY 15, 2026

Turkiye Diyanet Foundation. Screengrab via Youtube

Turkey’s Diyanet Foundation has opened three mosques in Gaza, according to Turkish state-run broadcaster TRT. A video online showed members of the Turkish charity in blue vests assisting in refurbishing and reopening the mosques.

Read more…

Peloni:  Mansur Ashkar provides a deep dive review of the man leading the changes taking place in Trump’s second term related to Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, ie Amb. Tom Barrack.   Ashkar discusses the past DOJ charges brought against Barrack during the Biden administration, his ties to the Gulf states and seriously disturbing questions raised by new revelations found in the Epstein files. In looking into these details, Ashkar asks the obvious question of whether this is truly the man that Trump should be trusting with the re-invention of the northern Levant?

Video Loads Below

Read more…