By Audrey Jacobs and Michael Lurie
SAN DIEGO — As they light the candles for Hannukah, the Jewish festival of lights, Jews recall the central message of this happy festival – renewing their faith as a free people in their homeland, the land of Israel. Hannukah commemorates the events of over 2,100 years ago, when the Jewish people, led by the Maccabees, overcame the oppressive rule of the Syrian-Greek Seleucid empire, regained their freedom, and rededicated their Holy Temple as the spiritual center of Judaism in Jerusalem.
Tragically, 200 years later the Roman army conquered the ancient Jewish state, destroying Jerusalem and the Temple. Through centuries of exile, the Jewish people retained their deep commitment to their faith and their land, lighting the Hannukah candles every year and dreaming of being a free people in Israel. And their hopes and dreams were finally realized with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 as the national homeland of the Jewish people and as a democratic state with equality and freedom for all.
As in ancient times, since 1948 the Jewish people’s ability to live as a free nation in Israel has faced enormous challenges. In an eerie recollection of its ancient struggles, the Jewish people have again had to learn to defend themselves, and today’s Israel Defence Force is seen by many Jews as the modern Maccabees, ensuring the freedom and security of the nation. And as before, once again the Jewish people are engaged in rededicating themselves to their traditions and culture, with an unprecedented flowering of Jewish scholarship in Israel.
Yet the full peace for which Jews have always yearned continues to elude them. Peace has been achieved with both Egypt and Jordan, and there has been no full-scale war with another Arab state since 1973. Today, the greatest threats to Israel are the Hizbullah and Hamas terrorist groups in Lebanon and Gaza, together with their patron, Iran. It is not just Israel who is threatened – the WikiLeaks over the past few days have revealed that several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, recognize how serious the threat of Iran is to the region, and are as committed as the United States and Israel to preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons.
This Hannukah, the conflict with the Palestinians continues to play a dominant role. It is a story of two nations struggling for self-determination in the same small land. Since the 1930s both Israel and most of the world have recognized that the only solution is to divide the land into two states, the Jewish state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine. This has been seen as a vital US national interest by every administration since President Johnson, and the contours of an agreement have been understood since the early 1990s. Though for Jews all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is eternally Jewish according to Jewish law, most Israelis remain willing to compromise for true peace. For nearly twenty years Israel has made every effort to sit down with the Palestinians to negotiate a final peace that meets the needs of both nations.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians are yet to respond with a genuine commitment to make peace with Israel on the only possible basis – mutual acceptance and mutual recognition. In just the past two weeks, a research effort supported by the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestinian government in the West Bank, has attempted to deny the Jewish origins of the Western Wall, the last remnant of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and Judaism’s holiest site. This past weekend, Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, reiterated the long-standing implacable Palestinian opposition to recognizing Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. And rather than negotiating in good faith with Israel without pre-conditions, the PA’s President Abbas continues to try to gain unilateral Israeli concessions on one of the final status issues, that of settlements, as a condition for negotiating the others including security, borders, water, refugees or Jerusalem.
This Hannukah, may we see another miracle – that the Palestinians finally choose the path of acceptance, the path of justice, the path of forgiveness, the path of peace. A few weeks ago, we commemorated the fifteenth anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, who famously said, “Enough of blood and tears. Enough!” This Hannukah may his message finally be heard, and may we soon see true peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and throughout the Middle East.
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Formed in June 2010 by Audrey Jacobs and Michael Lurie and comprised of more than 775 members, the San Diego Israel Coalition is a rapidly growing, volunteer, grassroots, passionate, inclusive pro-Israel group focused on powerful and peaceful Israel advocacy in San Diego.