WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Seeking spiritual strength in lighting candles isn’t unique to the Jews, but this year especially with the legitimacy of our people’s homeland under vicious attack, lighting the Hanukkah candles especially strengthens our homeland and peoplehood ties.
No, Hanukkah’s Not “Jewish Christmas”
We deeply divided American Jews can mostly agree, I think, about Bibi being right (though by me not right enough) when he said that if the non-Jews who amiably join us in celebrating Hanukkah had a clue what it’s about, they’d mostly stop. It’s not “Jewish Christmas.” And it’s not, as one super-lib Philly rabbi hijacked it one year, to the Philly Inquirer’s great glee, “a commemoration against Global Warming” (though how everyone lighting more and more candles every night for a week fights Global Warming, only a liberal knows).
Hanukkah on the surface commemorates we Jews having long ago briefly restored our homeland’s independence by throwing off the yoke of Alexander’s Seleucid successors. And no, it wasn’t “a civil war between Jews,” any more than the American Revolution, which likewise had a significant population segment opposing it, was a civil war between British colonists. Both times, a place that was not an independent sovereign state when its war began had become an independent sovereign state by the time it was over, and that’s the difference between Revolution and Civil War.
But Hanukkah has deeper meaning than that, and here’s where I think what Bibi said falls short: It’s not just amiable Christians, but we American Jews who should more fully appreciate the historical significance of what the Maccabees did, and what we today do by lighting the Hanukkah candles. Yes, the Maccabees cleansed the Temple and maybe one day’s oil lasted eight days. But the Maccabees’ lasting historical achievement was that they militarily reclaimed our Jewish homeland as ours. What we’re commemorating, as have our ancestors by annually lighting those candles for eight nights for two thousand years, is not a mere brief reflickering of Jewish homeland independence more than two millennia ago that lasted less than a century, but that the land of Israel (and not just inside the long-gone 1949 ceasefire lines) is ours.
And make no mistake. Today’s world rulers, who are more so than even the Romans, are back at Jerusalem’s gates. Here’s the U.N. and alas the U.S.:
U.N.
Historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria aren’t yours, says the United Nations Security Council (2334), not even “disputed,” but “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” And, says the UN General Assembly just now, 98-17, we’re taking to the International Justice Court Israel’s “practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” and Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation” thereof. So get out of there, and on your way out, you, just you, surrender your nukes (96-5, this week), and, btw, your “1948 creation” was a “catastrophe.” The UN really just said this.
U.S.
And not just the UN. Last Sunday (12/4/22) U.S. Secretary of State Blinken, citing President Biden’s statement last summer, reiterated at the J Street Convention U.S. belief in “two states – based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” Understand what Blinken and Biden are saying here, that the Jewish people has ZERO homeland equity in every inch of the land of Israel, historic Jerusalem included, beyond the long-gone 1949 ceasefire lines, that every inch beyond them has to be paid for, “with mutually agreed swaps.” This isn’t just a “two-state solution,” but one with a vengeance. And this is America saying this.
But Blinken wasn’t done. He further told J Street last Sunday:
“We will continue to unequivocally oppose any acts that undermine the prospects of a two-state solution including, but not limited to, settlement expansion, moves toward annexation of the West Bank, disruption to the status quo at holy sites, demolitions and evictions and incitement to violence. (Applause.)”
Working backwards: “Incitement to violence” – Rewarding actual perpetrators of actual violence through “pay for slay” goes way beyond merely inciting a crowd, some of whom may or may not respond to it. “Rewarding of murder” would have been more accurate and stronger, and aimed expressly at Palestinian Arabs, just as all the other American objected-to activity in that Blinken litany – “settlement expansion, moves toward annexation of the West Bank, disruption to the status quo at holy sites, demolitions and evictions” – was aimed expressly at Palestine’s Jews.
“Demolitions and evictions” – no qualification of demolitions being limited to homes of Arabs who cold-bloodedly murder Jewish civilians, nothing about evictions being limited to judicially-ruled evictions of squatters who don’t pay rent.
“Disruption to the status quo at holy sites” – Jews can’t pray on Jerusalem’s Jewish Temple Mount [the Philly Inquirer calls the whole Mount a “mosque”]. Only Muslims can pray there, and dig the Mount up with bulldozers, but that’s “status quo.”
“Moves toward annexation of the West Bank” – a total U.S. rejection of any Jewish homeland claim there, historically or under the Mandate, and also of the Hebrew-origin name – “Judea and Samaria” – used for three thousand years before invader Jordan coined “West Bank” in 1950. (And cf the UN calling the Temple Mount exclusively by its Arab name, “Haram al-Sharif.”)
“Settlement expansion” – not just no “new settlements” but even no natural outward growth of existing communities. [Israel itself should stop calling Jewish communities in the land of Israel “settlements,” long now a dirty word lovingly contrasted by the MSM vs. “Palestinian towns, villages, neighborhoods.”] And nothing about Arabs building, if you will “settlements,” some of them financed by Europe, violating the Oslo Accords.
American Jewish Response
I appreciate from your emails that some of you Gentle Readers of my weekly epistles (and I thank you for reading them anyway) favor “the two-state solution.” If you must, then so be it, but don’t start the negotiations from the 1949 ceasefire lines “with mutually agreed swaps.” Start them without historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria, to which Israel and the Jewish people have legitimate historical and international treaty claim, not being already declared “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Publicly advocate against the U.N. and U.S. policies pre-declaring them that.
And do something privately. For eight nights starting next Sunday night, December 18, light the Hanukkah candles and reflect on what for two millennia our people having uninterruptedly lighting them means. It’ll strengthen your Jewish soul.