“It happened in those times and again in our time!”
They say there never was a Chanukah
December 6, 2010
2,200 years ago, the Maccabees fought off an attempt from the Greeks to delegitimize the existence of the Jewish people. But you and I know that the battle to deny
Israel’s right to exist is still going on in our time and you can help us do something about it.
Only last week, a senior Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information official had the audacity to say, “The Jews have no historical or religious ties to the Temple Mount or the Western Wall. There is no archeological evidence that the Temple Mount was built during the period of King Solomon….”
This lie was contradicted by their own Supreme Muslim Council, the highest Muslim religious authority in Jerusalem which, from 1924 to 1953 published their own official guide to Jerusalem which described the Dome of the Rock as follows, “Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot according to the universal belief, on which [quoting Hebrew Scripture] ‘David built there an altar unto the Lord.”
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We must respond to this continuous campaign to delegitimize Israel by the Palestinian leadership. Only two weeks ago, UNESCO joined in in this campaign by calling Rachel’s Tomb a “mosque,” attempting to steal from the Jewish people one of its most sacred religious sites.
Remember the words of the Chanukah prayer, “It happened in those times and again in our time!!”
Rabbi Marvin Hier
Dean and Founder
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Chanoeka, een tijd van wonderen
http://www.chabad.org/holidays/chanukah/article_cdo/aid/238434/jewish/Miracles.htm
First Candle of Chanukah Lit at Kotel
by Gil Ronen
Dec 2 '10, Kislev 25, 5771
The Chief Sephardic Rabbi, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, Minister of Education Gideon Saar and Kotel Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich lit the first candle of Chanukah at the Kotel – or Western Wall – Wednesday evening.
Saar referred to the Palestinian Authority's latest claim denying that the Kotel is truly a Jewish holy site. “The Palestinians are busy denying the history of this land and of Jerusalem,” he said. “He who denies history is not interested in building a peaceful future.”
He added: "The present government rejects [former Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert's offers to cede Israeli sovereignty in the heart of Jerusalem – at the Temple Mount, the Old City and the Mount of Olives – and hand them over to international control.”
In a report last week, Taha Al-Mutawakil, Deputy Information Minister of the Palestinian Authority, wrote that there was no historical evidence that the Western Wall was the retaining wall for the ancient Jewish Temple; instead, he wrote, it is a Muslim relic called the Al-Buraq wall, where Mohammed tied his donkey before ascending to heaven from the Temple Mount. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/140942 “This wall has never been a part of what is called the Jewish Temple,” the report said. “It was Islamic tolerance which allowed the Jews to stand before it and cry over its loss.”
The Western Wall is known to be part of the wall that surrounded the Temple compound and not claimed as part of the Temple itself. It is, however, the only remnant of that compound that was not destroyed by the Romans who burned down the Temple in 70 A.D. so as to prevent Jewish resurgence..
The Kotel is not the holiest Jewish site. However, the holiest site – the Temple Mount itself,– has been under the Muslim religious authority's occupation since the seventh century CE. Israel conquered the Temple Mount in the 1967 Six Day War, but control over the area was given up by Israel's government, at the request of then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, and handed to the Muslim religious authority, known as the Wakf. Jews who ascend the Mount today are not allowed to pray there.
PA Arabs Upset Over Chanukah Menorahs
by Gil Ronen
Dec 2 '10, Kislev 25, 5771
The local Jewish leadership in Judea and Samaria has put up oversized Chanukah menorahs throughout the land of the Forefathers – and the local Arabs don't seem to like it.
The "WAFA" Palestinian Authority News Agency reported Wednesday about a new large menorah put up at Tapuach Junction, near Shechem, on its Arabic-language website.
“Witnesses said that the menorah was set by a crane near the Za'tara triangle [Tapuach Junction], a few kilometers south of Nablus [Shechem], and pointed out that this region is a center to a number of extremist Jewish settlements.
"The menorah is often used in Jewish religious rituals, and it seeks to impose settler ideology in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria] through these actions," WAFA complained.
David Ha'ivri, Director of the Shomron Liaison Office, said in response: “Chanukah is one of the most nationally identifying holidays of the Jewish people. We celebrate the amazing victories of the Maccabees who fought against all odds and succeeded in freeing our holy city Jerusalem from the Greek invaders and re-lit the candles of the Menorah on the Temple Mount.”
“Historically, all of the battles of the Jewish army under the leadership of Yehudah Maccabee took place within the areas of Judea and Samaria and the most famous of them all was the purification of the Temple Mount.
“Those are the events that we celebrate for eight days starting tonight. Around the world, Jews will hold public displays of the candle lighting but there is no place more significant for showing the light of Chanukah than Judea and Samaria.”
The Yesha Council, an umbrella group of the Jewish local authorities in Judea and Samaria, is holding public candle-lighting ceremonies on every night of Chanukah except Friday and Saturday evenings, at different sites of Maccabean victories. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/140941
Chanoeka same’ach!