Happy Hanukkah? Thanks, but no thanks.
Happy Hanukkah? Thanks, but no thanks.
My original article 'Happy Hanukkah? Thanks, but not for me', was published on Mondoweiss, 12th December 2012
I have decided to re-post another old article of mine, which was originally published on Mondoweiss. Mondoweiss chose the image above to accompany my article, so I am using it here. For some reason, the link to the image on Mondoweiss is broken.
Before you read the original article, please read my up-to-date commentary from this morning:
It is this time of year again, and I am more than fed up with all the Hanukkah recipes that appear on my news feed. I have never seen so many in the UK before, since arriving here almost fourteen years ago. The media’s pandering to all things Jewish right now is reaching a new high (or an inappropriate low, as I see it).
The likes of the BBC should do some research to find out more about Hanukkah. If they did, they would discover that this ‘cute’ festival is not a fluffy, benign Jewish variation on Christmas. The origins of Hanukkah, in its historical context, are told in the Books of the Maccabees, especially books 1 & 2. I believe they are available for anyone to read, provided people have an interest in ancient writings.
I find Hannukah a blood-curdling festival. It celebrates a relatively minor, but bloody act of Jewish terrorism (aka resistance) against the Greek occupiers in Jerusalem. A band of Jewish terrorists (Greek occupation’s perspective), or freedom fighters (Jewish perspective), attacked a small garrison guarding the Temple in Jerusalem, killed everyone, and re-consecrated the Temple for a brief period of time.
In primary school, we used to write ‘compositions’ regularly as a part of our homework. The teachers used to offer a few topics to choose from, but there was always a ‘topic of your choice’, if none of the suggestions appealed. As a child, I was deeply affected by the stories of Hanukkah. One time, instead of a composition, I wrote a short story, the only work of fiction I ever wrote. I was so deeply moved by the heroism of the Hanukkah rebels led by Judas Maccabeus that I wrote a story in the first person. It was about a girl who risked her life passing on messages to the Jewish underground during the Greek occupation. My teacher was so impressed by the story, she made me read it out loud to the whole class. I wish I had a copy, but it is long gone.
I do, however, remember how I felt when I wrote the story. I was gripped with fanatic zeal. I wrote the story as if I was in a trance, and it felt like it wrote itself. It was a strange, but not unpleasant, feeling to have as a nine or ten year-old. I felt complete devotion to my people, fuelled by a profound sense of the rightness of ‘our’ cause.
I saw myself as a direct descendent of those noble and heroic Maccabees. Oh, the disillusionment I felt when I learned many years later at university, that the name Maccabi (מכב״י) was not what I was told it was. At school we were taught that it was an acronym for, ‘Who is the greatest among all gods but you our God’, (מי כמוך באלים אדוני). The acronym doesn’t quite work, but we accepted it as fact. At university I found out that ‘Maccabi’ came from Maccabaeus, a Greek name. Many Jews adopted Greek names under Greek occupation. Later, Zionist historians who were constructing a new national identity, tried to link the name with religious devotion and Jewish nationalism, implying a direct continuation between the story of the Maccabees and conquest of Palestine.
When I read the Book of Maccabees I also found out that Judas was not a nice man. He was the third son of Mattathias the Hasmonean, a Jewish priest from the village of Modi’in. On the surface you think that family was dedicated to fighting for their religion at a time when the Greek occupation banned the practice of Judaism. But if you read the stories more closely, you find out how ambitious and corrupt that family was. They were fanatics who did not just kill Greeks, but anyone who opposed them or got in their way. Mattathias and his son worked to amass power, influence, and wealth for their family. Their story is dripping with blood, and with narcissism. Another one of the Hanukkah heroes was Channa, a Jewish mother who sacrificed her own sons just not to eat pork.
I now recognise the way that Israeli society and its education system fostered and encouraged such feelings of devotion in us. Jewish heroes, men and woman, were presented as role models for how we should be. Those lessons about devotion and commitment to our people, to our group were powerful and this devotion came before all other relationships. Rebelling against oppression, fighting for the identity and survival of our people were not just the most noble things any of us could do. They were the purpose of our existence. Jewish Israeli children, the country’s future soldiers, were setting an example for Jews everywhere. We were taught to be soldiers, rebels, fighters, and to ‘never again’ go like ‘sheep to the slaughter’.
This message was everywhere, not just around Hanukkah. We were flooded with stories of the heroism of the Jewish underground that fought against the British Mandate in Palestine. I remember a trip to the north of Isreal in primary school to see the gallows where the ‘heroes’ of the underground were hung by the Brits. I was overcome with sorrow, pain, empathy, and a sense of injustice. I loved those heroes. When put on trial by the British military for acts of terrorism against the Empire, they all went bravely to their deaths, allegedly saying, ‘I do not recognise the right of this court to judge me’. Did they really say it? Did they not? Either way, this is the story they teach everyone. The message was that it is better to die a hero than to live as a coward. Cowards were selfish people who only thought about themselves. Heroes were ready to sacrifice everything, including their own lives for the survival and freedom of their people.
It is hard to question such a powerful message when you are just a child, trying to figure out the right way to be in your world. Many years later, when I was doing some research for my Honours degree in genocide studies, I came across the Hansard from that era. I was stunned to discover that my old ‘heroes’ were called ‘terrorists’ by the British. It was one of my first forays into the politics of colonialism, and into perspective.
At home we had a book about the Lehi (לח״י). Readers might be more familiar with the English name, The Stern Gang. I loved that book, and used to go back to it over and over again. I was too young to understand the difference between real history, and manipulation. I did not understand that the book was a propaganda document. It was carefully crafted to provoke a deep emotional reaction for the purpose of indoctrinating us into our group identity, and for the development of powerful and unquestioning loyalty to our nation. We had another book like this about Theodor Herzl, and the history of the Zionist movement. Both books had plenty of photos. For a little while I even had a little girl’s crush on Avraham ("Yair") Stern. He was portrayed as a gentle spirit who wrote poetry...
Our education system implied continuity, a direct line between the Hanukkah Maccabees, and the Jewish underground during the British Mandate of Palestine. The latter allegedly fought a noble battle to free the Jews from yet another occupying power that wanted to oppress them. This is part of the deception of Zionist education. The Jewish underground did not fight for the liberation of ‘the Jews’. It fought for the establishment of an exclusively Jewish ‘national home’ at the expense of Palestine’s indigenous people. This was not a rebellion against occupation, but an overthrowing of one coloniser by another.
Jewish Israeli children do not stand a chance in the face of such intense indoctrination. It starts in the family, and continues through kindergarten, school, and all the way through military service. During Hanukkah, secular Jewish Israeli children (I was one of them) with innocent hearts, who like all children just crave acceptance and approval sing emotionally rousing songs. An important and central song, Ma’oz Tzur, calls to God to prepare a ‘slaughter’ of the ‘barking enemy’. Ma’oz Tzur is sung for eight days, during the lighting of each of the Hanukkah candles. The chilling lines below are sung to a particularly rousing bit of the music:
Le’et ta’chin mat’be’ach, mi’tzar hamena’be’ach
(When you prepare a slaughter of the barking oppressor/enemy)
Áz ég’mor bé’shir mizmor, hanukkat hamizbe’ach x2
(Then I shall conclude with a song of praise for the dedication of the altar)
The ‘dedication of the altar’ refers to the rededication of the Temple, which is the excuse for Hanukkah.
In Jewish religion, the dog is the lowest, most despicable animal there is. The ’barking‘ enemy in Ma’oz Tzur, equates the enemy to dogs. Not only is the enemy not human, they are as bad as dogs.
The song does not refer only to the specific history of Hanukkah. It is eternal, and implies that things will always be the same when the group is oppressed by someone. None of the real Hanukkah messages are just about Hanukkah.
The message in such songs does not sound bad when you are scoffing sweet jam-filled donuts, light pretty, colourful candles, receive gifts of money, and praise and approval for your singing from those around you. Children do not know what they are singing. Only as an adult I began to grasp the meaning of the lyrics. It is incredible how long it took me. The words were always right there, and I never saw them. They were so embedded in my psyche, I never thought to look into their meaning, until that time in my life when I began to question everything.
I wonder what it does to the human psyche to be desensitised from a tender age to ideas like slaughtering human beings for the sake of your group identity. When you look at what the Israeli soldiers are doing in Gaza right now, remember they were all brought up like me.
The hypocrisy of Hanukkah is eye-watering. The celebration and adoration of Jewish terrorism is at the core of Jewish Israeli identity. Yet Israel indiscriminately bombs millions of people, their homes, cities, hospitals, slaughters thousands children and babies on the false pretext of fighting ‘terrorism’, or rather resistance to Israel’s settler-colonialism, and oppression. One of the most disturbing psychological aspects of this is that whatever Israel does, its society continues to see itself as the victim. Their cult-like indoctrination ensures it, and Hanukkah is an important part of that indoctrination.
No decent human being should celebrate Hanukkah, and non-Jews have no business indulging it. Even the traditional dishes of Hanukkah are not especially Jewish. They are just local, or regional European dishes that were appropriated when Israel started to craft an identity for the Zionist state and its people.
If people research Hanukkah properly, and still want to celebrate it, that is their choice. But Israeli propaganda has long succeeded in whitewashing the unthinkable, leading to Zionist-serving Western ignorance. For seventy-five long years, this ignorance has aided and abetted the oppression and ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
Source: Fully Human Essays
Comments
Post a Comment