Many people seem to be upset with the State's Prosecutor office for deciding to indict Netanyahu on various crimes such as breach of trust and bribery. I am not sure why everyone gets so worked up when it is Netanyahu in the hot seat and all the little people who have been indicted over the years and convicted of crimes have no right to talk about how the system screwed them because that is undermining the justice system. Netanyahu and his cronies claim corruption, but are they also claiming that everyone currently in jail was railroaded and should be let out or only him? Do all his political backers fighting the injustice also say that the Prosecutors have railroaded everyone else, or is only Netanyahu being railroaded?

Kikar is reporting that Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef has paskened in his weekly Saturday night shiur that one who becomes a State witness to testify against someone else is an evil person and becomes passul from testifying in beis din or at weddings and such.

Rav Yosef says that people should be careful to only adjudicate their issues under the auspices of a beis din and not in secular courts. Besides for the other issues wrong with the secular courts, such as using relatives as witnesses which is no good and the judges not knowing the Shulchan Aruch or the halachos of testimony or court proceedings, they also use state witnesses, which is completely against halacha. If he was part of what happened, he too is a rasha and cannot be a witness.

The truth is, Rav Yosef is only talking about this now because of Netanyahu. He has said this before, as have other members of his family, and this statement is nothing new. In 2018 Rav Yitzchak Yosef himself spoke about judges and lawyers in the secular court system being invalid witnesses. In 2012 Rav Ovadia Yosef, his father, spoke about the same issue. In 2010 his brother Rav Avraham Yosef, then Chief Rabbi of Holon, spoke about this as well. The only difference is that now he singled out the state's witness rather than just talking about the judges and lawyers, but that is just another aspect of the process that he already invalidated.

We bless with warmth the soldiers, and we are praying for them that they should go out in peace and return in peace.... The army needs to take lesson from the Syrians how to slaughter and crush the enemy..

  -- Rav Yaakov Yosef

Last week Rav Dov Lior was detained/arrested for a brief amount of time for questioning as part of the investigation into the book "Torat HaMelech" that is being called hateful and inciting to violence.

This morning Rav Yaakov Yosef was also detained/arrested for a brief amount of time for questioning regarding the same issue. Rav Yosef was only detained for a few minutes, asked a couple questions quickly and then released.

Is it possible the real reason to detain/arrest these rabbonim was to create a precedent for the future? It seems to have been completely unnecessary in this instance, but if all they wanted was to create a precedence, perhaps it makes sense...

How would you respond to this?

In this weeks parsha sheet "Eretz Yisrael She'Lanu", Rav Yaakov Yosef said it is preferable to buy, when possible, from religious Jews. He says if you have two stores, one of a Jew and one of a goy (or of a Jew who acts like a goy i.e. he is not religious), we are obligated to purchase specifically from the God fearing Jew. He bases this on a passuk in the Torah. Rav Yaakov Yosef also related that it was well known about the Chazon Ish that he would walk far to a makolet to buy items, rather than purchase from the makolet nearby, because the one nearby was owned by a non-religious Jew, and the one farther away was owned by a religious Jew.

I had the radio on for a moment, and caught the end of a discussion regarding the above psak. The broadcaster was criticizing it saying that with saying such a psak, they [haredim] cannot then come and tell [the establishment] that when they are learning instead of serving in the army they are learning for all of Israel. They are divisive and only look out for their own, and they should not then try to sell us stories of how they are concerned for all of us and learn for all of us.

(Again, I missed most of the discussion - I just caught the end of it which was that one statement)

How would you respond to that?