Chanukah Over Syria

On this Chanukah, menorahs will be lit not only in the land of Israel, from Jerusalem to Gaza, but in Lebanon and on the heights of Mt. Hermon overlooking Syria. Vacationing families will visit the waterfalls of the Hermon Stream in the Golan Heights from which the Syrian Greek armies had descended thousands of years ago to conquer Israel leading to the events of. Chanukah.

The lights of the menorahs over darkness are a reminder that miracles can still happen here.

The Syrian Greeks had called the area Paneas after their god Pan and the Arab Muslim conquerors had retained the pagan name as Baneas due to the inability of the so-called ‘Palestinian’ occupiers to pronounce the letter ‘P’. In the original Chanukah, the Maccabees had driven the Syrian Greeks and their enforced paganism out of the land and during the Six Day War their latter day descendants also pushed out the Syrian invaders at great cost.

Commanding the heights, the Assad regime had unleashed artillery fire on the villages of Northern Israel, forcing residents to live in bomb shelters. The Syrian Muslim armies had fortified the Golan Heights with layers of guns and bunkers. Under heavy fire, Israeli soldiers charged the heights and though more than half of the force was killed or wounded, the Israelis took the heights living out the words of the Betar hymn “to die or to conquer the mountain”.

The heights are marked by Israel’s long struggle against empires.

Here is the Cave of Pan, now an archeological site, whose worshipers believed that its waters came from the underworld, but the idol is long gone along with its followers to their own underworld after attempting to impose their paganism on the Jews of Israel.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes, styled as ‘God Manifest’, began a ruthless campaign of persecution to wipe out Judaism in Israel. He ordered the Torah defiled with the blood of pigs and commanded “that the lamp, which they call undying and which burns continually in the temple, should be extinguished”. In the climax of Chanukah, the Maccabean revolt by a devout family, not only liberated Jerusalem, but relit the menorah with the last remaining pure oil that, despite being only sufficient for one day, continued to burn for eight days until fresh oil could arrive.

While Antiochus, his empire and his gods are long gone, menorahs still burn in the land that he once ruled as a reminder of the miraculous victory and of the holy light he tried to suppress

Rome stepped into his place appointing Herod, the son of an Edomite and an Arab, to become the first Arab ruler over Israel. Here on the heights are also the ruins of Herod’s palace built to honor his Roman patron. Herod Philip II, his son, who like his father was not Jewish in any way, the son of Cleopatra of Jerusalem whom Herod married after murdering the last Hasmonean princess, declared this to be his capital Caesarea-Philippi. That too is in ruins.

The rubble of empires is everywhere around. Here is an ancient Roman road leading to Damascus and there an Ottoman tomb. Turkey’s brutal Islamist dictator, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, successfully used former Al Qaeda terrorists to invade and take over Syria. Erdogan promises to rebuild the Ottoman Empire and invade Israel as well. The Islamic Jihadist seizure of Syria is a major reason why Israel has expanded its presence in the heights to overlook Syria.

But amidst the ruins of empires, a 1,200 year old synagogue has been rising again in Ein Keshatot (known to the Arab Muslim occupiers as Umm el-Kanatir) and as our own Ari Lieberman described, “I counted no less than six menorahs” among the ancient carvings. The Maccabee revolt had inspired those who worshiped at that synagogue to go on living in faith.

For now it is quiet on the heights where visitors and soldiers walk surrounded by the ruins of the past and the promise of the future. Stone, no matter how built, only endures for so long. Everything that is of earth crumbles except for the fortitude and courage of the hearts of men.

Over two thousand years ago, Judah Maccabee walked among his men, hungry and dressed in rags, and urged them, “O my fellow soldiers, no other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt of dangers; for if you now fight manfully, you may recover your liberty, which, as it is a thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it proves to be to us much more desirable, by its affording us the liberty of worshiping God.”

“You must either recover that liberty, and so regain a happy and blessed way of living, which is that according to our laws, and the customs of our country, or to submit to the most opprobrious sufferings; nor will any seed of your nation remain if ye be defeated in this battle. Fight therefore manfully; and suppose that you must die, though you do not fight; but believe, that besides such glorious rewards as those of the liberty of your country, of your laws, of your religion, you shall then obtain everlasting glory.”

Over two thousand years later the descendants of the Maccabees once again stand watch.

In the days of the Seleucid Empire, Israel existed as a beleaguered encampment surrounded by the Syrian-Greeks, Romans, Edomites and Arabs. That much has not changed. But neither has the will of a small people to keep the light of truth and faith burning against all enemies.

On Oct 7, Israelis made the decision to fight. After over a year of death and terror, of international condemnations and threats from regional and world powers, Israelis have not backed down. And for a second year, menorahs will be lit in wartime. But after over a year of fighting, that brave light of ages shines not only in Jerusalem, but over Gaza, Lebanon and Syria as a reminder that these battles are not just of the moment, but of eternity.

Israel once again stands condemned by Rome and Greece, by the United Nations and the European Union, along with some of their Jewish collaborators, who want nothing more than for the little lights of the menorah to go out, across all of Israel and around the world.

Like Antiochus IV, they defile everything sacred, call the Jews ‘Nazis’ for resisting Islamic genocide, uphold a death cult and denounce Judaism, and expect that is enough to win, but the lesson of Chanukah is that Jews persist in kindling light in the face of darkness. And that when the time is right, G-d rewards their efforts by making that light burn bright.

Life in Israel has always been precarious and living here is an act of faith. The little lights across Israel represent little lives committed to believing in G-d and that miracles can still happen.

A year ago, Israel had hit its lowest point, and while the lights of the menorah still do not shine in the Temple, which remains defiled by Jihadist occupiers on the Temple Mount, it shines against the darkness in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and perhaps in some coming year over Jerusalem.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.