The Worst Hanukkah Ever?

There have been some pretty bad Hanukkahs in Jewish history. The ones that happened between 1933 and 1945 while antisemitic fascists raged across Europe were horrific. The ones in the years afterwards, celebrated by folks like my grandparents in DP camps in Austria or elsewhere were not so great either.

Then there’s the Hanukkahs celebrated in the late 19th century in the Pale of Settlement when state supported pogroms could break out at any moment, leaving behind a trail of broken glass and broken bodies. The Pale was the breeding ground of Zionism, of course, where secularized Jews first thought that the answer to their poverty, trauma, and oppression was to regain their own state in Palestine, a state which could make its own laws and defend itself with the sword if need be.

Not such good Hanukkahs there.

Yet this Hanukkah is different. There have been other Hanukkahs where the Zionist state is at war, but there’s never been anything like this. For two months Israel has been torturing 2.3 million people under siege, the descendants of people who fled, or were expelled from, Palestine in 1948. The denial of water, food, electricity, medicine, and homes to millions of occupied people has been coupled with the destruction of 1/3rd of their homes, as well as many of their hospitals, mosques, schools and cultural centers. 16,000 have been killed…