by Majid Rafizadeh  •  Gatestone Institute  •  February 14, 2026

If Iran can drag negotiations across months and years, it no doubt hopes to reach a moment when U.S. pressure weakens, priorities shift, or its leadership changes. In that sense, diplomacy becomes a defensive weapon, an end in itself. Pictured:Iranian Airborne Cruise Missile (By Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, Wikipedia

• If Iran can drag negotiations across months and years, it no doubt hopes to reach a moment when U.S. pressure weakens, priorities shift, or its leadership changes. In that sense, diplomacy becomes a defensive weapon, an end in itself.

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By Victor Sharpe

I remember once seeing a picture of a Native American chief looking wistfully towards the distant horizon where once his ancestral homeland lay. He was speaking to a stranger about the peace treaties he made that were all dishonored by American officials. The caption read: “Let me tell you about land for peace.”

With this in mind, and with the painful knowledge of Israel’s past “land for peace” fiascos, I penned an article called “First Two-State Solution is 104 Years Old”. I felt it necessary to remind the world how, in 1921/22, the British Colonial Office had arbitrarily abrogated the promises made by Britain under the 1917 Balfour Declaration – of assisting the creation in Mandatory Palestine of a Jewish National Home.

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Peloni: Must read article.  A brilliant, powerful and important review of Trump’s evolving legacy addressing where Trump’s Middle East policy went wrong, and how to fix it.

by Linda Goudsmit | February 15, 2026

President Trump at the Israel Museum. Jerusalem May 23, 2017. By U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv – President Trump at the Israel Museum. Jerusalem May 23, 2017 President Trump at the Israel Museum. Jerusalem May 23, 2017, CC BY 2.0, Wikipedia

I have learned to trust my instincts and that when things don’t make sense something else is going on. America 1st President Donald J. Trump has done extraordinary things to strengthen the United States and Make America Great Again (MAGA). Journalist Joan Swirsky lists the extraordinary first-year accomplishments of President Trump ’45 (2016-2017) in her September 6, 2025, article posted on The Post & Email, “A Fitting Diagnosis: Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

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by Ari Bussel

Translation by Peloni for IsraPundit (online)

President Yitzhak Herzog, at the annual training of the Ministry of Justice in Eilat, on the subject of “reading diversity”. Tuesday, November 8, 2022. Photo by Amos Ben Gershom / Government Press Office of Israel, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikipedia

The top headlines report that President Trump continues to pressure President Herzog to grant a pardon to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Cultural totalitarianism turned people into sterile zombies, brainwashed them, perverted the minds of men and women, and subdued intellectuals responsible for the future of their people. The entrane to the cave is closing.

Alexander Maistrovoy | Feb 13, 2026

Photo by Janko Ferlic on Unsplash

And the Piper advanced and the children followed,

And when all were in to the very last,

The door in the mountain-side shut fast.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin: A Child’s Story

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Peloni:  How has it come to be that we live in a world where nearly every question leads to some form of answer dependent upon Qatari involvement?   The proceeds from the sale of  Venezuelan oil is being wired to Qatar to avoid Venezuelan debtors being able to place a lien on the proceeds.  Qatar acts as the financial middle man in which the funds are ultimately auctioned back to Venezuela, while focusing on stabilizing and rebuilding Venezuela’s economic infrastructure.  The lack of normalcy in such an arrangement leaves Qatar with an outsized role of trust in holding the funds and arranging the transactions back to Venezuela, which should be particularly worrisome given Qatar’s previous role in Venezuela which could hardly be described as that of a neutral party, but rather as that of an insidious advocate and promoter of the Muslim Brotherhood.  As Sen. Elizabeth Warren has raised alarms over the lack of oversight in what amounts to a Qatari controlled slush fund holding hundreds of millions of dollars already, where is the accountability for this effort designed to specifically skirt accountability.

Natalie Ecanow | The Dispatch | Feb 4, 2026

Click Link to Read Article – Requires sign up for free account

Why Is the Trump Administration Wiring Venezuelan Oil Revenue to Qatar?

Excerpt

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Peloni:  This is an important speech which bears careful examination as it lays out the roadmap for the future of the West under the control of the US.

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Peloni:  This is an important initiative. 

by Daniel Greenfield | Feb 13, 2026

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In just the last four weeks…

• Judge Kate Menendez, a public defender appointed by Biden, issued an injunction blocking the arrest of anti-ICE rioters and using pepper spray against them.

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Paul Schnee: If you agree with the article posted below please contact your congressman, senator and the White House to urge a change of direction.

Al-Jolani, now ensconced in Damascus and enjoying the woefully misguided approval of President Trump, is an unapologetic ISIS terrorist killer despite donning a suit in an attempt to lull us into a state of narcotic serenity.  Make no mistake, he is viscerally opposed to the West in general and to the United States in particular.

By replacing Bashar al-Assad with Abu Mohammed al-Jolani all we have done is switch deck chairs on the Titanic.

It comes as no surprise that The Guardian would justify a policy that rewards our enemies and punishes our friends, something that became commonplace after Barack Hussein Obama scrambled into the imperial box.

Donald Trump has managed to get a lot of things right but he is catastrophically wrong on this as our allies the Kurds are now discovering.

With his eyes wide shut President Trump is supporting the kind of vicious Islamic totalitarian regime he ostensibly opposes while making it virtually impossible for the embattled and loyal Kurds to achieve a state of their own not to mention placing Israel’s security in a much more precarious position.

Francisco Gil-White | MOR | Feb 12, 2026

Kurdish Soldiers Qameshli, Syria. Photo by Yan Boechat/VOA – Voice of America, Public Domain, Wikipedia

• If you care about the West, you should care about the Rojava Kurds.
• If the Rojava Kurds care to live, then they must fight.
• And if other Kurds care to have a future, they must join that fight.
• There is no alternative.

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Peloni: Fantastic article!

Herzl recognized nationalism as a powerful but neutral tool, capable of bringing out the best in us – or the beast in us.

Gil Troy | Feb 12, 2026

Herzl and the ‘Democratic Fraction’ at the Fifth Zionist Congress. A group photograph of Herzl with members of the Democratic faction of the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, 1901. The photograph shows, among others, Chaim Weizmann, Martin Buber, Berthold Feibel, Ephraim Moshe Lilin. Photo by Unknown author – National Library of Israel, Public Domain, Wikipedia

On February 14, 1896, the first 500 copies of Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage – The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question arrived at Theodor Herzl’s home.   “I have the solution to the Jewish question,” this Viennese journalist and playwright exclaimed during seven months of frenzied writing. The Jewish Question was two-dimensional: Jew-haters couldn’t figure out why Jews always stand out – and Jews couldn’t figure out why Jew-haters can’t stand them.  “I know it sounds mad; and at the beginning I shall be called mad more than once—until the truth of what I am saying is recognized in all its shattering force.”

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Peloni:  When Trump expressed that the PA would reform itself, and his envoys suggested this was already true, is this the reform of which they were speaking?  There exists an impossible credibility gap for anyone who would champion the continuation of the PA and Fatah in any form, as ALL the American and European Peace Processors have done and still continue to do to this day.  The utility of such obvious bad actors as the PA in the role of representing ‘peace partners’ belies more than a lack of clarity by the likes of Kushner and Witkoff (among too many others), as what could be more clear than the what is written in the PA’s own charter and which consumes so much of the PA’s own budget as the US has has continued to finance this terror operation with US dollars over the years.  The US should not only withhold funding for the PA, it should insist upon its complete dismantlement.

By Christine Douglass-Williams | Feb 13, 2026

Only the hopelessly naive or those who are agenda-driven could have any confidence that the Palestinian “resistance” is anything but a jihad against Israel.

Pay-for-slay has never stopped, amid manipulation and lies to deceive the world into thinking that it did. Now it’s expanding, as the forces of jihad double down against Israel in response to the crushing blow Israel dealt to Hamas, Hizballah and the Islamic Republic of Iran (with help from the U.S. in attacks on the regime’s nuclear sites).

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Peloni:  Dr. Kedar walks through several key points:

• The roots of the conflict predate both 1967 and 1948, and represent deeper historical and ideological struggles.
• Israel is perceived as illegitimate by its adversaries not because of its borders or occupation, but due to a fundamental rejection of Jewish sovereignty of any form.
• Jihad is framed not only as armed struggle but as a comprehensive, long-term campaign extending into media, economics, academia, and demographic strategies.
• In this worldview, civilian casualties and material destruction do not serve as deterrents but are often anticipated and targeted against Western sensitivities.
• Israel is seen not as the ultimate objective, but as the front line in a much broader ideological confrontation. 

He also delves into explaining why the West consistently misunderstands the conflict—imposing its own assumptions about diplomacy, compromise, and statehood onto an ideology that operates under fundamentally different principles and if Israel falters, the repercussions will extend far beyond the Middle East.  

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Flag of the Islamic State (IS), also known as “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) or “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL). Photo by Yo – Own work, Public Domain, Wikipedia

After surviving numerous Islamic State (ISIS)-linked assassination plots, Syria’s President Ahmad al-Sharaa — himself a former jihadi — governs with a target on his back. Moreover, ISIS is resurging in Syria at precisely the moment that the United States is scaling back its military presence.

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It is shocking that Qatar has not voluntarily turned over Meshaal to US custody. He was indicted by the US Justice Department (DOJ) for, among other things, terrorism and murder conspiracy.

Leonard Grunstein |   Feb 13, 2026

Likenesses of Khaled Meshaal and Ahlam Tamimi. Image via AI

Khaled Meshaal was indicted by the US Justice Department (DOJ) for, among other things, terrorism and murder conspiracy. He has yet to face justice and remains free in Qatar.

The charges, unsealed on September 3, 2024, included those relating to his central role, together with the other defendants, in planning, supporting and perpetrating the October 7th atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists, who were led by Meshaal and his fellow defendants. The Attorney General at the time, Merrick Garland, stated nearly 1,200 people, including over 40 Americans were murdered and hundreds of others were kidnapped. It should be noted that the kidnapped also included Americans, who were held hostage. Many of those hostages were murdered, including American Hersh Goldberg-Polin Z”L and HY”D.

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By Sha’i ben-Tekoa 

First there was the disconcerting news of a Muslim-only community being built in East Plano, Texas, and now Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced his office has launched a formal investigation into a similar project for a sharia compliant city for 20,000 foreign nationals in rural Kaufman County, backed with Saudi money.

Now, I have no problem with religious people wanting to live in such a uniform community. The Satmar Jews in Brooklyn and Kiryas Yoel in Orange County north of New York City do that. In the name of equal treatment under the law, I have no problem with these projects of building all-Muslim communities.

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Peloni:  The way to combat radicalism and foreign influence in the US educational system is not to disclose how badly foreigners are manipulating and weaponizing the American education system against America, but to actually intercede and prevent such influence from occurring.  Knowing what is taking place is only relevant and useful if it actually leads to remedying any malfeasance taking place.  Hence, it would seem a rational conclusion that it is not enough for Americans to know how badly Qatar and Saudi Arabia are influencing their children’s education which is the goal of the Accountability Portal, as such disclosures do nothing to limit the influence being disclosed.  Despite the quaint name, there seems to be a stark lacking of accountability in the  Accountability Portal which might be better named the Transparency Portal.  The US needs to eliminate this foreign funding for the indoctrination process for the successive generations of America, not just expose it.

Foreign funding from Qatar and China to US universities also raises questions about public influence

All Israel News Staff | Published: February 12, 2026

Saudi Crown Prince MBS Welcomes Qatar Emir in Riyadh. Screengrab via Youtube.

Colleges and universities in the United States have received over $1.1 billion in funding from Qatar and more than $285 million from Saudi Arabia, according to data for 2025 released by the U.S. Department of Education.

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Peloni:  A truly insightful bit of advice for Trump on Iran, Gaza, and the important role of history in forming informed and useful statecraft stratagems for a better future.

From Cato the Elder, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Machiavelli

Clifford D. May | Feb 11, 2026

Cato the Elder.  By Unknown author – Bildarchivaustria.at, Public Domain, Wikipedia

“Carthago delenda est!” 

In case your Latin is rusty, that means “Carthage must be destroyed!” Cato the Elder would repeat the demand in every speech he gave in the Roman Senate.

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