Rabbi Elyashiv’s 2 Reasons For Not Going to the IDF

Authored by: העורך Editor

Quoting “The Partial View”:

An acquaintance recounts how, during his tenure of study in Israel, he sat by Rav Elyashiv zt’l, as a ‘chayal’ from a hesder yeshiva, walked in and inquired as to the Kashrus of a Mezuzah at his military base.

Here’s the conversation: ‘L’mah ata mitkavain’ – what do you mean to infer, queried the Rav. ‘She’zeh dira ba’al korcho’ – that a domain in which an individual is coerced to abide in, is not a normative dwelling place, and is therefore absolved of Mitzvas Mezuzah? [See Tractate Yoma 10b]

“Zeh lo ba’al corchi, ani merutza la’asot tzavah!” – it’s not against my will, countered the soldier, I’m agreeable to army service!

“Zeh tzorich li’yot ba’al corchacha” – it should be against your will, said Rav Elyashiv.

Then he asked the zkan Haposkim the $64,000 question: “Lamah lo osim bnei yeshiva tzavah?” – and quoted the Rambam that it’s a mitzvah to defend the Yishuv in Eretz Yisrael against an enemy.

Rav Elyashiv answered: Yeshivaleit are not obligated to train, they’re only ‘mechuyav’ to fight – and then Tzavah won’t take them. Then he continued: And even if they are enjoined to train, you’re not mechuyav to put your life in the hands of Arik Sharon [Sar Bitachon at the time]. The Posek Hador provides clarity and perspective for this crucial issue.

End quote.

Well, I don’t understand the first answer at all. And the second answer applies to all Jews, not just those studying Torah!

Sheikh Abu Zant, the Mohamedan Hoppe: A Death Sentence Fatwa… All Based on a Hostile Press Release

Authored by: העורך Editor

A true story by Khalid Durán, “How CAIR Put My Life in Peril”:

On April 4, 2001, a self-described advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. by the name of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), issued a press release1 attacking my forthcoming book, Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Islam for Jews.2 CAIR’s attack snowballed into a campaign of personal vilification, which eventuated in a Jordanian political leader calling me an apostate (murtadd).3 Neither CAIR nor Sheikh ‘Abd al-Mun’im Abu Zant of Jordan’s Islamic Action Front had ever read or even seen my book, but the CAIR attack prompted the latter to issue an appeal to Muslims, asking them to unite to kill me. According to most interpretations of the Shari’a (Islamic law), an apostate from Islam must be executed.

At the time, it was not clear whether Abu Zant’s outburst constituted a formal fatwa–a religious edict. But the sheikh was unequivocal in calling for my “blood to be shed.” For its part, CAIR denied that Abu Zant called for my death and claimed that my American publisher concocted the death threat in order to increase sales,4 even though the threat first had been reported in a Jordanian newspaper, Ash-Shahid. Abu Zant lay low for a time, but on July 22, he again called me an apostate, and declared it lawful (halal) to shed my blood. This time Ash-Shahid expressly called his statement a fatwa and bragged about the worldwide media coverage given to Abu Zant and Ash-Shahid.5

The inflammatory language used by Nihad Awad, CAIR’s executive director, to vilify my book, was bound to incite reactions like that of Abu Zant. Put differently, the accusations and the language used by CAIR in its statements, especially those in Arabic, could not but result in calls for violence against me. And so I find myself, the author of a book written to promote a wider understanding of Islam, under a death threat and in need of protection. CAIR has put my life in peril. Its actions are the culmination of a campaign meant to intimidate and silence not only me, but any Muslim in America who would speak out in favor of freedom, tolerance, and dialogue.

…

Here is the original Hoppe piece being referenced.

‘A Pharoah Who Knows Not Joseph’ and Mohammedan Assured Destruction

Authored by: העורך Editor

Ooh, don’t you love reading those allusive bureaucratese articles? Even when they say something sensible and crucial, they do an excellent job of blunting the alarming edge.

“Before lecturing Israel, Britain and France should look in the mirror” by David Hermelin on Israel Hayom.

“London and Paris often speak in the name of Western values. But the demographic and political changes taking place within their own societies should prompt a debate over the future of their nuclear arsenals.”
Bleh. Here’s my version:

Britain and France (so-called) [and Germany, too!] may Islamize — and your explosive means will go to genocidal-leaning Mohammedans (or be governed by them even before they take the reins). Start destroying your nuclear bombs now (instead of what you’re actually doing, which is massively building up your destructive capabilities and stockpiles), you fools! Nukes don’t care who is whom; they just respond to being physically activated. No time or standing to lecture Israel on existential risk (now or ever).

Socialism! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Global Supply Chains

Authored by: העורך Editor

Those “chains” are a brace holding up the world.

That’s my adaptation of the infamous quote from The Communist Manifesto: You have nothing to lose but your chains! (or the actual translation: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”)

A strong summary by weak AI:

The global supply chain is the most complex, voluntary, peaceable system of human cooperation ever (largely) undevised. No central planner ordered it into existence. Millions of individuals, pursuing their own ends, wove together a miraculous network that threads Indonesian rubber in your shoes and Chilean copper in your phone. That’s what price signals can do, undistorted. בן זומא ראה אוכלוסא על גב מעלה בהר הבית אמר ברוך חכם הרזים וברוך שברא כל אלו לשמשני.

Socialism doesn’t liberate this system. It destroys it. Less workers, less effective, worse social conditions. And history is unambiguous about the darkness that returns when market order collapses: not brotherhood, but scarcity. Not justice, but painful death.

USG Refuses To Cut Even the Easiest, Most Obvious Waste and Fraud…

Why They Won’t Even Fix the Easy Stuff

  • Posted on July 27, 2026

The Department of Transportation’s headquarters campus in Washington spans two complexes covering 1.8 million square feet across 11-acre of prime DC real estate.

In the private sector, such a trophy office property would fetch north of $1 billion per year in rental income.

Yet for the federal government, two-thirds of the space sits empty according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal government’s own internal watchdog.

This is based on real data; the GAO toured the department’s buildings last fall and counted the empty desks.

And this is far from an isolated case. Of the 189 government buildings around the country that were analyzed by the GAO, 168 were underutilized– with occupancy averaging just 37%.

One of the worst offenders is One Aviation Plaza in Queens, which sits at 13% occupancy.

Ironically, Congress actually set a MINIMUM standard for all government buildings to be at least 60% occupied. This is the law of the land in the United States, set by the 2023 USE IT Act.

So, Congress was surprisingly trying to make things more efficient and save taxpayer money– potentially billions each year. They passed a law. But the government doesn’t follow it.

The big consequence for the government violating its own law so far has been this GAO report. Nobody was fined, nobody was fired, and nothing was sold. Basically we got a PDF.

And all of that is just one category of waste at just one department. The bigger losses are to outright fraud.

In June, the Justice Department announced a record-setting healthcare fraud takedown: 455 defendants, the most ever charged in a single healthcare fraud operation, including 90 doctors and licensed medical professionals, all accused in schemes involving $6.5 billion in fraudulent claims.

Yet federal agents only managed to seize $182 million in cash and assets. No word on what happened to the other $6.3 billion.

By the government’s own accounting, federal agencies made close to $200 billion in improper payments in fiscal year 2025 alone… $24 billion more than the year before.

That’s money which should never have gone out the door, went out in the wrong amount, or can’t be documented.  And that was only across 64 programs at 15 agencies… a small fraction of the government’s total footprint.

This keeps happening for a simple reason: the federal government’s ~$7 trillion annual budget is too vast for anyone to keep track of… and no one is ever held accountable.

Bureaucrats who waste the money never get fired; in fact it is damn near impossible to fire a federal employee. And voters continue electing the same incompetent, crooked politicians to public office.

Even when there’s public outcry over obvious fraud, the legacy media closes ranks around their party and insists that voters are racist for criticizing “Learning Centers”.

None of this is free. The empty buildings, the stolen billions, the money nobody can track: it all gets paid for with borrowed money. And that deficit spending is what fuels inflation.

June’s Consumer Price Index came in at 3.5%. By the Fed’s own admission, inflation has now missed its 2% target for five years running.

And after all that failure, few in Washington will name the cause.

A lot of people blame oil, especially after the war with Iran sent crude above $126 a barrel. But oil has been all over the board for the last five years; it was under $60 a barrel just last fall. So why wasn’t inflation falling when oil was cheap?

Continue reading on Schiff Sovereign…