Hanukkah marks the victory over those who sought to erase the Jewish heritage. The Syrian-Greek colonialists may have disappeared from history, but the Arab colonialists remain
This week Jews are celebrating Hanukkah, the festival of lights. It is a festival that serves as a timely reminder that we are living in an era of not only ‘fake news’, but fake history.
The current and widely publicized idea that the Jews are ‘colonialists’ or ‘occupiers’ of a land that was never theirs, constitutes a particularly egregious example of fake history.
Over 700 years before any Arab Muslims had emerged in history to scream their first ‘Allahu Akhbar’ and to start beheading people, the Jews of Judea, today’s Israel, fought and defeated an impressive enemy, the army of the Syrian-Greek empire under Antiochus IV.
Antiochus’ army vastly outnumbered the Jewish forces, but as has been the case so often since, the outnumbered Jews won.
After the victory, the Jews cleaned up the Temple, which the Syrian-Greek army had desecrated. Wanting to light the menorah, they realized there was only a tiny bit of oil. Nevertheless, it lasted for eight days.
Jews celebrate Hanukkah in memory of not only the miracle of that tiny amount of oil that lasted for eight days — and the divine protection that this symbolizes — but the victory of freedom and truth over the attempt at annihilating Jewish history and identity at the hands of the Syrian-Greek empire.
During the Syrian-Greek onslaught to Hellenize the Jews and annihilate their culture, there were Jews who denounced their own people, actively fighting against those Jews who refused to submit to Syrian-Greek culture.
Jewish Voice for Peace and many other Jews, who revere Palestinianism more than they venerate their own history, their own land, and their own Judaism, have ancient role models, but they probably do not know enough history to be aware of them.
The temple mentioned in the story of Hanukkah, is the exact same temple of which the Western Wall is a remnant. Arabs claim that the Western Wall is not part of Jewish history.
The international community in the shape of UNESCO promoted this blunt attempt at history theft in October 2016, when the organization declared the Temple Mount – site of the two biblical temples – ‘a Muslim holy site of worship’.
In 2017, UNESCO furthermore passed a resolution denying Israel any rights – legal or historical – to any part of Jerusalem with Israel being referred to throughout the resolution as ‘the Occupying Power’.
Hanukkah continues to resonate strongly with the Jewish people. The Syrian-Greeks may have disappeared from history, but the Muslim Arab colonizers have not.
In the 7th century, they ventured out from the Arabian Peninsula and proceeded to colonize the Middle East and beyond – forcefully converting, killing and displacing the peoples who already lived there — in an imperialist frenzy to spread Islam. This colonization included Judea, which was colonized by Muslims in several instances, most recently by the Ottoman Empire.
The Arab war against Israel, which has been ongoing for more than 70 years, is simply a continuation of those colonization efforts. Unlike the previous attempts, these continue to fail.The imperialist ambitions of Islam have never abated, which is why the Arab Muslim world continues to see Israel as an enemy that must be removed.
Acknowledging that jihad in the form of military aggression against Israel ceased to be an option in the face of overwhelming Israeli military superiority, the Arabs instead decided to play the victim card, mixed with the old and tested demonization of the Jews.
This combination worked for the Nazis, who managed to fabricate and distribute the big lie about the Jewish people so effectively, that the Jews were dehumanized in the eyes of the Europeans. The Arabs, therefore, are not mistaken in hoping that it might work for them, too.
Westerners, most notably academics, politicians, journalists and diplomats, not only ache to believe the lies fabricated by the Arab world about Israel, but they happily help the ‘Industry of lies’, as the author Ben Dror Yemini has termed it, by producing new lies themselves.
One of them is the slanderous falsehood that Israel is an ‘apartheid state’, a lie that is peddled on Western university campuses every year as part of the travelling circus of ‘Israel Apartheid Week’.
Most recently, Mahmoud al-Habbash, PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ adviser on Religious and Islamic Affairs, claimed that Jerusalem has belonged to the ‘Palestinians’ for 5,000 years, adding that Jerusalem will remain Arab, “until Allah will inherit the earth and whoever is on it.”
Never mind that King David founded Jerusalem as the capital of the Jews 3,000 years ago and that the Muslim Arabs only came onto the world stage around 1,400 years ago. Al-Habbash knows that anything goes today and that people will believe anything, as long as it serves the purpose of destroying the Jewish nation state.
This is the kind of Muslim replacement theology that many in the West support, as if their brains are automatically put on hold, whenever the question of Israel comes up.
The lights of Hanukkah symbolize the importance of truth and freedom. They are reminders to the Jewish people to never submit to those who wish to steal their freedom and identity, whether that theft comes in the shape of massive armies, or through the euphemism of a ‘two state solution’, which – judging from historical experience — would quickly turn into a ‘no state solution’.
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Judith Bergman is a columnist and political analyst
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, where in any of your books mentions israel as a a religious Muslim sight Before Your I repeat Your prophet mohammed said. jews lived in arab lands a millennium before islam came to be.before Muhammed where there is doubt he was ever in israel but had enough work forcing the 60 paganite e arabs who had 60 statues around the it was in the 8th century that forbided the jews to build a synagague or rebuild old ones from the time before Mohammed why . it is well known that christians from the holy roman empire did the same , they used the sword in the west the scimitar in the east to force there people into one united religion that all followed except the jews. the Basis was which happened before the roman empire turned into a Catholic state of war popes and people converted to Judaism because they were attracted to it , and the writings. their is know such thing as fake jews. if your mother was jewish or correctly converted you are a jew. this Khazar bull is an old story9 we used to goof on grandad that he had khazar blood b/c he had blue eyes, so, big deal if he did. but he was from poland . and his grand father and before him where in other european countries only to be kicked out , and you think it was because of bad jewish behavior. you who think that know nothing. we were accused of stealing christian childrewn on passover and using their blood for matzah. not one time did this ever happen and by the way it is known that jews drain all blood from what thmeat they eat and that is onl cloven footed animals that chew the grass. and Guess who spread this to the then ignorant parts of europe, ths Muslims and just recently a muslim held a sign saying christians, don,t forget how the jews used your babies to make matzah, boy are the desperate to get the christians on their side and just within 2 years anti semites found out that some kazars may have converted and that where ashkenazi jews came from. what Hors poopy. it came from along the rhine area and what about sephardi jews they are real b/c they chose to live in arab lands. well they werent treated good by mulims either, and read their poster muslims will take the world and Freedom will go to hell. so you young college ant semetic punks should know what and who you are defending and stop with the lies against jews. if not For Jews there whould not be Christians. and to all who hate Jewish Slaughter which is fact as the least painless and fastes way, but a christian friend of mine sent me a video of 2 muslims as you can tell by their color were beating and kicking the crap out of a gout in some room . i got sick for days and the video was fact, is that what they do befor their Halal slaughter, i say f–k a people that treat an animal that way and if they can dio that to an animal it is fact that they can do worse to a human. and how dare u people compare us to the stench of latvians , lithuanians , and other antisemites did to jews in the camps the germans didnt do but get them in trains it was the real low class christians of europe that did the filthy work in the camps the forest killings by the Einstasatzgrupen was a nasty low class german bunch that hitler was going to have killed if he won the war as they would have talke b/c of post traumatic guilt, some younger ones didnt wan to do the so called Aktions, but they were let go and gave them booze and in a short time it bcame nothing to kill, this is a bad part of human nature that all should be aware of