Peloni:  This is deeply disturbing to watch.

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Francis Kapper | Contributor | Daily Caller |  April 17, 2026

President Donald Trump and Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi announced Friday that the Strait of Hormuz was officially open.

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Peloni:  The limit placed on Israel’s freedom of action in the current ceasefire as described below is a serious setback for Israel, which was not hampered by such limitations in the previous ceasefire.  Furthermore, American assurances of Hezbollah’s disarmament have consistently failed to materialize, most recently after billions of US dollars were spent in the fool-hearted scam to fund the LAF for such an enterprise when the LAF’s complicity in providing political and logistical cover for Hezbollah has been well known.  So, are we looking at the latest rendition of America providing another ruse by which Hezbollah is disarmed on paper alone, while limiting Israel’s freedom of action, so as to further advantage US efforts to end the current wars without removing the terrorist actors who initiated these wars?  While looking back at the model proposed in Gaza, there remains a good deal on which to be concerned regarding what might be achieved when relying upon the US to develop peaceful strategies in lieu of allowing decisive victories over Israel’s adversaries on the battlefield.  Peace is not the absence of war, but rather what comes from successfully and decisively winning a war.  Can Trump shortcut the latter by pursuing the former?  This is the real question which arises following Trump’s announcement of this latest ceasefire, and the answer seems somewhat altogether too discouraging at the moment.  While placing this re-used and less viable band-aid on the decades old Iranian campaign against Israel from Lebanon, resolution for the Hezbollah debacle unfortunately now lies dependent upon Washington’s efforts in negotiating with Iran after Trump provided Iran with the linkage between the situation in Lebanon and that in Iran, thus highlighting and reinforcing the immaterial nature of any possible negotiations between Israel and Lebanon.

IDF troops stay inside 10km-deep ‘buffer zone’ in southern Lebanon, retain right to strike ‘planned, imminent or ongoing attacks’

All Israel News Staff | Published: April 17, 2026

Israel Defense Forces, Israel Defense Forces, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

The 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon announced by U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday went into effect at midnight, after Hezbollah wounded at least three Israelis in rocket attacks shortly before the deadline.

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Peloni:  Highly recommended article.  Joan Swirsky once again outdoes herself in a sweeping review of Trump’s successes, his travails, and his failures, including a mention of why such a successful businessman has encountered so many significant setbacks from within his own organization.

By Joan Swirsky | The Post & Email | April 16, 2026     ©2026

https://www.whitehouse.gov/gallery/?query-8-gallery_tag=conferences

Back in 2011, many years before June 16, 2015, when Donald J. Trump took that infamous escalator ride to announce his intention to run as a Republican for President of the United States, I wrote an article entitled Trump Is Already Running the Country.

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Peloni:  The promise of Never Again was never fulfilled by the international community, as the post WWII pogroms which took place in Poland and elsewhere demonstrated, even as the Nuremberg Trials were ongoing.  Additionally, evidence of international complacency in failing to provide succor to the world’s Jewry following WWII was evident as Arabia actively, publicly and unashamedly made itself Judenrein.  Indeed, the promise of Never Again was always to be fulfilled by the existence of a Jewish State, and notably, this was the raison d’etre on which the Zionist ethos pursued the re-establishment of the Jewish State of Israel.  From the Jews of  Eastern Europe to the Jews of Arabia to the Jews of Ethiopia, the world’s complacency was notable as were the actions of the Jewish State to embrace its people returning home.  So, as Lenard Grunstein explains so well in this essay below, Never Again is an call to action, one which must keep us ever vigilant and ever motivated to act, particularly as the world remains complacent about the plight of Jews in a world which is notably ever increasingly hostile to Jews simply because they are Jews.

Allies need to join together—and not shirk from the battle against antisemitism and anti-Israel bias in all its forms.

Leonard Grunstein | April 14, 2026

President Isaac Herzog, at the ceremony of laying out foreigners for Holocaust Remembrance and Heroism in the tent, will be remembered at the Yad Vashem Museum. Monday, May 6, 2024. Photo by Haim Zach / Government Press Office of Israel, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia

Another Yom Hashoah has come and gone, honoring the memories of 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their cohorts during the years of World War II and the Holocaust. This year, we can name 5 million of these individuals, as documented in the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names and in the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

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Peloni:  See also “Pope Leo XIV is wrong on Iran”

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Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger | “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” | April 17, 2026

Israeli Air Force F-15I Ra’am warplanes. Photo by IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia

*”Epic Fury” has documented an unprecedent military synergy and cooperation (personal, social and operational mutual-respect) between the US and Israel, with the US leveraging Israel’s unique capabilities, especially in the areas of intelligence, the air force and special operations in the face of the war against America, which erupted in 1979. Israel – more than any other ally – has acted as a unique force-multiplier for the US.

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Peloni:  This notification of the coming ceasefire comes without any vote supporting it from Israel’s Security Cabinet.  There is no way to describe this other than what it is.  Trump has linked Iran to Lebanon, even as he is presumably demanding Iran give up any such linkage to Lebanon in the coming negotiations.  Meanwhile the Lebanese President has refused to even speak with Netanyahu on the phone, further demonstrating his state of capture under Hezbollah, while still seeing his calls for a ceasefire from Israel on Hezbollah satisfied.  This is a disgraceful surrender of Israel’s security interests in Lebanon to satisfy the Iranians, and Trump didn’t even allow Israel’s own govt the dignity of making such a concession themselves.  This is an utterly shameful point of appeasement on the eve of the latest US negotiations with Iran when peace thru strength, rather than ceasefire by concessions, should have been the strategy which gained Iran’s participation in this US gambit to end the war with Iran.

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Peloni:  The High Court calls for a compromise, but compromising the authority of the elected govt is exactly what is at stake in this trial.  In effect, they are requiring the govt assign themselves a limited authority or face the judges imposing something similar on them.  Divesting ministerial authority from the ministers is not deliberating the law, it is setting legal precedent in which the Court would be limiting the power of the elected govt without any established legal basis to do so.  Is the authority of the unelected  High Court greater than the authority of the elected representative govt?  By requesting Ben Gvir and Netanyahu compromise on this point, they are requesting them to agree that the answer to this question is ‘yes’ when they answer should instead be clearly stated as ‘no’.

Justice Minister, coalition members vow to ignore court ruling, says it has no authority to order firing ministers

All Israel News Staff | Published: April 16, 2026

After a ten-hour-long, stormy debate, Israel’s High Court did not issue a ruling on a petition to dismiss National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir over his alleged politicization of the police after a hearing on Wednesday.

Instead, the nine judges called on the government and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to find a compromise that would restrain the controversial minister, instead of taking the unprecedented step of forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire Ben Gvir.

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Peloni:  This is very welcome news.

ASFI | April 16, 2026

Tennessee Capitol. Photo by Ken Lund – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikipedia

New York  — Americans For A Safe Israel, a leading pro-Israel organization, is thankful to the Tennessee General Assembly for passing legislation that directs state agencies to use the historically accurate name “Judea and Samaria” in place of the politically charged “West Bank” in official state materials.

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Peloni: Excellent!

By Norma Zager

Now, Iran speaks loudly and clearly that it will destroy Israel, the Jewish people and America. The world’s reaction to this bit of news? #whatakidder

Twitter comments by Iran boasting about victories over the foolish countries of the world got me thinking. What if Adolf Hitler could have tweeted his thoughts after his conference with then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at Munich?

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The battle at Deir Yassin was turned into a fabricated “massacre,” helping launch a strategy of demonization that is still used against Israel today. Opinion.

Dr. Alex Grobman | Apr 15, 2026

The village of Deir Yassin in the 1930’s. Photo by The original uploader was SlimVirgin at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Kippi70 using CommonsHelper.[1], Public Domain, Wikipedia

Peloni & David Fieldstone

Screengrab via Rumble

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Paul Schnee: This is alarming and suicidal. Just as in Europe, we have imported a parallel society that will NEVER integrate. We have imported war.

RAIR Foundation USA | Apr 15, 2026

Screengrab via X

Peloni: The breaking event here is that Israel and Lebanon have met directly, to appease the Americans, all while ignoring the fact that the Lebanese govt has no capacity to deliver anything they might agree to do, even to the point of controlling its own armed forces, even as the US continues to cover the costs of these armed forces.  So the big news is that this meeting has no material relevance beyond giving cover to the pressure that America is applying to the Netanyahu govt to purposefully end the war prematurely, with the obvious caveat that Hezbollah will be pulled from the jaws of destruction so as to appease their Iranian masters in Tehran.  This rationale for this celebrated ‘peace negotiation’ is terribly flawed, and the celebration is quite inappropriate.  If the proposed ceasefire goes forward, the only thing which might be honestly stated is that Evil won…again.

Panel:

• Host : Jonathan Hessen : TV7 Editor in Chief and Host of TV7 Israel News
• Analyst : Amir Oren : TV7 Editor at Large
• Mr. Hussain Abdul Hussain : FDD Research Fellow
• BG (Res.) Yossi Kuperwasser: JISS President; former DG of Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs

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by Pierre Rehov •  Gatestone Institute  •  April 15, 2026

The issue is no longer whether the regime in Tehran is under strain — it clearly is — but whether Washington is preparing, consciously or not, to replace a brutal clerical dictatorship with a brutal military one. Pictured: Iran’s then Supreme Leader, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, prepares to award a medal to the late General Amir Ali Hajizadeh (L), then commander of the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in the presence of the senior IRGC leadership, in Tehran on October 6, 2024. (Image source: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader)

• The issue is no longer whether the regime in Tehran is under strain — it clearly is — but whether Washington is preparing, consciously or not, to replace a brutal clerical dictatorship with a brutal military one.

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Peloni:  This event spelled the coming end of Hezbollah, raising the question of why the West and the Americans are once again racing to save these terrorists from annihilation.

By Hugh Fitzgerald | April 14, 2026

The IDF on Friday revealed the details behind the largest strike in Lebanon since the start of Operation Roaring Lion. That strike took place on Wednesday, April 8, and within ten minutes at least 180 Hezbollah terrorists were eliminated, in near-simultaneous strikes on the Dahiyeh neighborhood in southern Beirut, on the Bekaa Valley, and on the area between the Litani River and the Lebanese border with Israel. More on this achievement can be found here: “IDF delivers massive blow: 180+ Hezbollah terrorists eliminated in one minute,” Israel National News, April 10, 2026

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Peloni

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Ben Gvir – Own work, CC0, Wikipedia

A growing legal and political confrontation in Israel has been centered on efforts to remove National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from office, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forcefully opposing such moves while the High Court of Justice weigh the issue.

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