How to defeat the PLO and UNRWA

Below is a list of doable steps that will make all the difference:

1. Recognize the new paradigm: Fatah can no longer be defined as a “partner for peace.”

2. Neutralize COGAT (Israel’s Civil Administration), and its blind protection of the PA and UNRWA.

3. Present PA and UNRWA Indoctrination as a primary factor in the war on Israel.

4. Since the PBC (Palestine Broadcasting Corporation) continues to incite, close​ ​all Israeli government frequencies used by the PBC.

5. Define PA and UNRWA schools as warlike entities that deserve no support.

6. ​Reinstate​ oversight of all texts and teachers​ in PA/UNRWA education.

7. ​Advocate the repeal of “Pay for Slay” legislation as a condition for aid

8. Disarm all Palestinian Arab entities, including the PSF, trained by US and Israel.

9 ​​Arrest anyone who pays killers who have ​carried out acts of ​murder.

10. Encourage confiscat​ion of all funds set aside ​by the PA ​to pay ​salaries for life to anyone who kills a Jew.

11. Organize conference of the descendants of ​the ​Dalal Mugrabi 1978 terror attack, where 35 Jews were murdered. Dalal is lionized by the PA and in UNRWA education.

​12. ​Advocate harsh conditions ​in jails for terrorists, because current terror cells have turned into summer camps and universities.

1​3 ​Commission new films of UNRWA and PA SCHOOLS. Seeing is believin

​14. Oversee all funding to PA and UNRWA​: Demand accountability for cash ​allocations ​to PA and UNRWA. Hold all PA funders criminally responsible for PA transgressions (NGOs have no diplomatic immunity).

​15. Create ​a ​new think-tank to monitor and fight Arab terror.

 

​16 Hire a community organization social worker to create a new Arab health and social welfare system, one that is independent of ​the corrupt ​PA and UNRWA.

 

17. Transform “victims of terror” into an effective ​ organization to present the human face of those who have suffered the consequences of Arab violence.

 

​18. Launch ​inquiry into private ​investments in the ​PA.

 

19. Foster an effort for UNRWA policy change​ – Counter “Right of Return by Force of Arms”. Instead, advance the resettlement of Arab refugees from 1948 and their descendants. ​

 

That’s all it takes, folks.

Letter to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and Middle East Subcommittee

David Bedein

Director

December 20, 2022

Letter to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and Middle East Subcommittee,  two weeks before the Republicans assume the chair of both entities.

I am writing this policy letter as a journalist who has covered US-Israel relations and    run a news & research agency in Jerusalem since 1987.

I am well aware of the fiduciary authority that the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and its Middle East Subcommittee have over US Middle East policy.

I shall start this memo on a positive note.

We have learned from journalists in Ramallah that the US has held back funds allocated to UNRWA over the past two years, because of the UNRWA refusal to abide by the US – UNRWA memo of understanding that would require UNRWA to revamp the current UNRWA curriculum, which is based on indoctrination of the next generation to engage in a war to obliterate the Jewish state – a stance which would stymie any two-state solution.

UNRWA spokespeople, with whom we maintain direct contact, make it clear that UNRWA will not change its curriculum in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza, a curriculum which emanates from the Palestinian Ministry of Education.

The reason the US is holding back the funds is that UNRWA will not fulfill its side of the US-UNRWA memo of understanding from July 14, 2021, a written accord which requires UNRWA to excise the incitement from its school system as a condition to receiving renewed US funds, which were stopped on August 31, 2018.

This is the US-UNRWA accord:

https://www.state.gov/2021-2022-u-s-unrwa-framework-for-cooperation/

These are excerpts from the PA curriculum now used in UNRWA schools:

https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/?s=GROISS

https://israelbehindthenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Jews-in-Palestinian-Authority-Schoolbooks-in-UNRWA-Use.pdf

https://israelbehindthenews.com/2022/09/24/revealing-maps-the-palestinian-vision-as-taught-in-unrwa-schools/

https://israelbehindthenews.com/2021/11/30/dalal-al-mughrabi-a-murderous-terrorist-as-a-role-model-in-palestinian-authority-schoolbooks-used-by-unrwa-2/

Our agency has asked the US State Department if it would demand a change in the PA curriculum, to advocate a two-state solution. We received no response to this query.

UNRWA schools in Jenin and in Gaza have allegedly become virtual arsenals, which has led us to ask the US State Department whether the US will ask for a weapons and ammunition inspection of UNRWA facilities, to which we have received no response.

In terms of its continued advocacy of violence, the PA has enacted an unprecedented law which mandates that anyone who murders a Jew shall receive a salary for life, and if the killer dies during an act of murder, then the family will receive a salary for life.

We asked the US State Department if the US would ask the PA to repeal its pay for slay statute. We received no response.

Perhaps most telling, however, is the US initiative to impose a consulate for PA affairs on Agron Street, in the heart of Jerusalem.

Does that not represent a threat to the sovereignty of Israel over Jerusalem?

 

Why the ADL abandoned Antisemitism and went woke

In 2018, the ADL announced that it was no longer in the ‘kindness’ business. “Forget Kindness. Schools Need to Foster Social Justice,” Jinnie Spiegler, the ADL’s curriculum director, barked.

By three years old, Spiegler claimed white children in America are already racists.

Spiegler, an obsessive leftist with seemingly no Jewish interests, whose Twitter account promotes antisemitic leftists like AOC, Cori Bush, and Ilhan Omar, has a singular obsession.

“When my daughter was 3 years old, I taught her the word stereotype,” she revealed in one article. “I figured that planting the seed might yield fruit soon enough.”

Planting leftist ideological seeds in children is what the ADL’s education programs do.

While the ADL claims to fight antisemitism, like a lot of activist groups it discovered that there was a much better way to pay the bills by getting into the business of diversity training and education. That freed the ADL from having to solicit Jewish donors or to care about antisemitism.

When Jonathan Greenblatt, a former Obama operative, took over the ADL, its annual revenues were $56 million and had been roughly in that range throughout the decade. A year later they shot up to $65 million, then $76 million and totaled $91 million in 2020. With revenues having nearly doubled in 5 years, the odds of ousting Greenblatt remain vanishingly small.

The ADL shares a fundraising firm with Planned Parenthood, the NAACP and the ACLU, but it also has developed a massive nationwide presence in the educational system.

Its educational ‘No Place for Hate’ arm claims that it’s present in 1,800 schools reaching 1.3 million students in one school year. It offers “anti-bias” workshops and training, online and in person for teachers, and curriculum and ‘non-hate’ certification for schools. According to the Seattle branch of the ADL, “workshops cost a school or district $1200″. Activists have documented contracts with school districts amounting to tens of thousands of dollars each.

But one of its more successful areas is also where its teachings may violate state law.

Florida’s ‘Stop Woke Act’, signed into law by Gov. DeSantis, bars subjecting any student to the idea that anyone is morally superior or oppressive on account of their race. The ADL’s ‘No Place for Hate’ handbook however demands that students “explore, recognize and acknowledge your privilege” and defines racism as “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color, based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people”

The familiar message here from critical race theory is that only white people can be racist.

This violates the Stop Woke Act’s warning that schools may not teach that “an individual’s moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.”

The ADL operates its ‘No Place for Hate’ program in Florida. One press release bragged that “22 public schools in Miami-Dade County were designated as ‘No Place For Hate’, including all 8 City of Miami Beach Public Schools”. Another claimed that it was present in 234 Broward County public schools which is the 6th largest district in the country with 270,000 students.

That means potentially as many as 270,000 students may be taught that white people are evil.

This disastrous program is being funded by $100,000 in federal funds.

Broward is such an asset for the ADL that its local director, Kiesha Edge, a former black employee of the Florida Department of Health, is now the ADL’s National Director of Education Operations, even while remaining back in Florida, in charge of 450 “education facilitators”

“We live in a society where systemic racism is alive and well,” Edge contended.

The only remaining systemic racism is teaching kids that they’re racist because of their race.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center took the lead in drawing up a K-12 code of ethics to end classroom indoctrination banning “teachers from using their classrooms for political, ideological, or religious advocacy.” But that is exactly what the ADL is doing with ‘No Place for Hate’.

And we’re taking on the ADL’s racist curriculum too.

The old ADL is mostly dead. Kiesha Edge and Jinnie Spiegler are what the organization is now:. a collection of woke leftist activists who believe that America and its people are evil racists.

ADL officials can be of Jewish ancestry, like Spiegler, or black like Edge or even Arab, like Senior Vice President for National Affairs George Selim, but what unites them is politics.

And the money doesn’t hurt either.

Education and training is what the ADL actually does more than anything else. What had started out as a gimmick with the ADL’s original ‘World of Difference’ program became toxic as it was transformed into ‘No Place for Hate’.

Spiegler, the ADL’s curriculum boss, objected that “many schools hope to engage young people in social action work, yet mistakenly focus on kindness”. Her ideal was the mobilization of some Parkland students to advocate against the Second Amendment after the school shooting there caused by Obama’s dismantling of school discipline policies.

“The first step is to facilitate students’ learning about the issues in a rigorous and complex way, and then to get them involved in action, advocacy and/or activism,” she laid out.

This year’s No Place for Hate Coordinator Handbook & Resource Guide doubles down on the war on kindness.

“Each year, ADL receives activities from participating No Place for Hate schools that focus on kindness,” the handbook complains. “ADL highly encourages schools, in designing their activities, to move beyond kindness to social justice.”

The ADL’s definition of social justice, one that it’s forcing into schools, is wholly partisan.

Students, Spiegler urges, should not just go “volunteer at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen”, they should “advocate for affordable housing”. Instead of just “tutoring children”, they have to fight for criminals and break up the “prison-to-school pipeline”. Obama’s efforts to break up the “prison-to-school pipeline” led to the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland.

And the ADL states that “each student must have an opportunity to participate in three ADL approved activities”. Parents are not wrong to describe this as partisan indoctrination.

The ADL claims that “as a 501c3 nonprofit organization, we take no position on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for office.” That is not true. Even during the 2020 election, the ADL continued to attack Trump while offering no criticism of Biden. And it certainly does not meet the IRS test of operating “primarily to further the common good and general welfare of the people.”

Its curriculum and its agenda are wholly partisan and like many leftist groups, it operates with the complicity of the IRS and other federal and state regulatory organizations.

But the ADL has bigger issues on a statewide level with its racist educational curriculum.

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin banned critical race theory and “inherently divisive concepts” from K-12 classrooms. These include the idea that anyone is morally superior or should be “discriminated against because of their race” or that “members of one race, ethnicity, sex or faith cannot and should not attempt to treat others as individuals without respect to race, sex or faith”.

‘No Place for Hate’ has a sizable presence in Virginia including in the Arlington Public Schools.

These are only two of the twenty states where the ADL’s racist curriculum may run into trouble.

The ADL’s education curriculum had started out teaching tolerance, but now teaches intolerance, and advocates partisan politics. Despite the organization’s origins, its handbook is notable for mentioning Jewish people only three times, once in the ADL’s background and twice in its definition of antisemitism.

But the ADL is not a Jewish organization anymore. It’s a generically lucrative leftist group which provides bias insurance to schools while joining in leftist attacks on conservatives.

A few years after Greenblatt came on board, the ADL announced a new program together with eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar: one of the leading funders of the anti-Israel Left. ADL Senior VP Eileen Hershenov was the former general counsel for Soros’ Open Society octopus.

“Kudos to my former boss, George Soros,” she gushed.

Hershenov oversees the ADL’s partnership with the Aspen Institute, funded by Soros. The joint ADL-Aspen program’s civil society fellows included the founding Co-Director of the Open Society Foundation’s Economic Justice Program.

Small wonder that Greenblatt attacks any critics of Soros and the ADL, formerly critical of the Nazi collaborating billionaire, now has a page dedicated to defending the antisemitic leftist.

The ADL’s funders and partners list increasingly resembles those of most leftist activist groups with $1 million from Craigslist’s Craig Newmark, the Rockefellers, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. There’s nothing Jewish here.

As an organization, the ADL doesn’t belong in Jewish circles, and its educational curriculum doesn’t belong in any schools.

 

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

The Palestinian committee to “fight apartheid” and slander Israel meets for the first time to discuss policy

On December 11, 2022 the Palestinian National Anti-Apartheid Committee met for the
first time. It was organized by the PLO anti-apartheid department, appointed in July 2022
and chaired by Ramzi Rabah, a senior member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (DFLP).1 The meeting was held in coordination with the Palestinian Authority (PA)
ministry of justice, various NGOs, the PA human rights organization and the BDS movement.2
Its objective, as stated by the organizers, was to unite all the groups acting against what they claimed was “Israeli apartheid.” So far it is unclear what prompted the establishment of the department at this time but apparently its overall objective is to merge and coordinate antiIsraeli activities.
The meeting was attended by several PA government ministers and members of the PLO’s
Executive Committee, as well as diplomats serving in the PA, Israeli Arab representatives, and Palestinian and Israeli academics.
E_207_22

No, Gray Lady, the ‘bedrock’ of US-Israel relations isn’t a two-state solution

View of the New York Times offices in Manhattan, New York City. December 19, 2016. Photo by Serge Attal/FLASH90
**FRANCE OUT**

In a social media post on Sunday, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu blasted the Gray Lady for its gall.

“After burying the Holocaust for years on its back pages and demonizing Israel for decades on its front pages, The New York Times now shamefully calls for undermining Israel’s elected incoming government,” he tweeted, in response to a weekend editorial titled: “The Ideal of Democracy in a Jewish State Is in Jeopardy.”

Click here to read full article. 

Israel Policy Letter to US House Foreign Affairs Committee & its Middle East Subcommittee

At the dawn of a new session at the US Congress, writing this policy letter as a journalist who has covered US Israel relations from a perch in the press center of Jerusalem, running a news & research agency since 1987.

Well aware of the fiduciary authority that the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and its Middle East Subcommittee have over US Middle East policy.

Starting this memo on a positive note.

We learn from journalists in Ramallah, that the US has held back funds allocated to UNRWA over the past two years, because of the UNRWA refusal to abide by the US – UNRWA memo of understanding that would require UNRWA to revamp the current UNRWA curriculum, which is based on indoctrination of the next generation to engage in a war to obliterate the Jewish state-a stance which would stymie any two state solution..

UNRWA spokespeople, with whom we maintain direct contact, make it clear that UNRWA will not change its curriculum in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza, which emanates from the Palestinian Ministry of Education.

The reason US holds back the funds is that UNRWA will not fulfill its side of the US-UNRWA memo of understanding from July 14, 2021, a written accord which requires UNRWA to excise the incitement from its school system as a condition to received renewed US funds, which were stopped on August 31, 2018.

This is the US-UNRWA accord.

These are excerpts from the PA curriculum now used in UNRWA Schools:

https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/?s=GROISS
https://israelbehindthenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Jews-in-Palestinian-Authority-Schoolbooks-in-UNRWA-Use.pdf

https://israelbehindthenews.com/2021/11/30/dalal-al-mughrabi-a-murderous-terrorist-as-a-role-model-in-palestinian-authority-schoolbooks-used-by-unrwa-2/’

Our agency has asked the US State Department if it would demand a change in the PA curriculum, to advocate a two state solution, to which we get no response whatsoever

UNRWA schools in Jenin and in Gaza have allegedly become virtual arsenals, which has led us to ask the US State Department as to whether the US will ask for weapons and ammunition inspection of UNRWA facilities, to which we have received no response.

In terms of its continued advocacy of violence, the PA has enacted an unprecedented law which mandates that anyone who murders a Jew shall receive a salary for life, and if the killer dies during an act of murder, then the family will receive a salary for life.

Asked the US State Department if the US would ask the PA to repeal its pay for slay statute. No response.

Perhaps the unkindest cut of all is the US initiative to impose a consulate for PA affairs on Agron street, in the heart of Jerusalem, not even in East Jerusalem.

Does that not represent a threat to the sovereignty of Israel over Jerusalem?

After 4 months: Pregnant woman shot in terror attack leaves hospital with baby

The pregnant Jewish woman from New York who was seriously wounded when she was shot in the stomach in a terrorist attack near King David’s Tomb has been released from the hospital together with her baby, four months after the attack.

Liba Ahuva Schreiber, 37, was visiting Israel with her family when the terrorists opened fire on them and other civilians waiting at a bus stop in Jerusalem in August, and was one of eight people who were wounded in the attack. She was taken to Shaarei Tzedek Medical Center in serious condition with multi-systemic injuries. Schreiber, who was 26 weeks pregnant, was forced to give birth prematurely.

Hospital staff were ecstatic at the recovery of Schreiber and her baby and hung balloons and signs wishing the family well before they left the hospital.

Schreiber was able to hold her infant for the first time since his birth, after being unable to see him due to the complex and prolonged treatment both of them had required.

Her husband, Chaim Schreiber, said upon the release of his wife and newborn son from the hospital: “Blessed is He who performed a miracle for us in this place. We arrived here after Tisha B’Av and we are leaving on the eve of the Hanukkah holiday and are happy to celebrate Hanukkah at home with family. Our lives were in danger, and we thank the Creator of the World that we lived and survived and for His miracles and wonders. A special thanks to the dedicated medical, nursing and social staff members who treated and saved the lives of my wife and the baby.”

“Thank you to the MDA team that saved her life and evacuated her quickly. Thank you to the trauma and intensive care team that saved her and brought her back from the brink of death to life and to the entire surgical department and all the other supporting departments and units that fought for her survival and rehabilitation. Thank you to the team who treated the premature baby for four months until he was able to go home with us, hale and healthy,” the father said.

Liba Schreiber and her son still have a long road to full recovery and rehabilitation ahead of them. They will have to return to the hospital for further follow-up care and medical treatment, including additional surgeries. The family has asked the public to continue to pray for the complete recovery of Liba Ahuva Bat Rivka Breindel and for her son, Dovid Ben Liba Ahuva.

Secret document reveals: EU will help Arabs take over Area C

A document drafted by the European Commission in Eastern Jerusalem calls for helping the Palestinian Authority actively take control of land in Area C, which is supposed to be under full Israeli control under the Oslo Accords.

A report by Channel 13 News revealed the document from which it appears that the EU will work to map land to prove Palestinian Arab rights there – without leaving traces of its activities. The document appears to point to the EU’s use of left-wing organizations in Israel for this purpose.

The EU also calls for “following and monitoring Israeli archaeological activity in the area” – on the grounds that it is being used as a pretext for settlement building in Judea and Samaria.

The document also states that there is a need for a common European vision and a more coordinated approach between the parties in Europe in order to maximize the ability to expand involvement in Area C.

It was reported that Israeli officials received access the document and are currently studying it.

The European Union responded: “As a general rule, we do not refer to documents. The policy of the Union is created by its 27 member states. Our policy has not changed – we are committed to a two-state solution, with Jerusalem as the future capital of both states. We call on Israel to allow a tangible improvement in the lives of the Palestinians, enable Palestinian construction, and put an end to deteriorating living conditions for Palestinians in the field.”

Chairman of the Religious Zionist Party, MK Bezalel Smotrich, responded, saying that, “the fight against the Arab takeover of open areas in Judea and Samaria is one of the most pressing and important challenges that the next government must address and one of the main reasons for my demand to receive authority for this in the Ministry of Defense.”

“The blatant involvement of the European Union in the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to establish facts on the ground and unilaterally establish a de facto Arab terrorist state in the heart of the Land of Israel is unacceptable, contrary to international law and law, and incompatible with basic rules of diplomacy in relations between states,” he pointed out.

“With God’s help, we will lead a combined effort in the next government – diplomatic, economic, enforcement and settlement – against the hostile activity of the Palestinian Authority and the international actors and we will stop it with determination,” he added.

Gush Etzion Council Head and Chairman of the Yesha Council Shlomo Ne’eman said: “The Arab takeover of Area C is the biggest strategic threat in our region. Its goal is nothing less than changing the borders of the country. Every week the State of Israel loses large areas, every day dozens of illegal homes are erected, roads are broken up and paved at significant points as part of an organized strategic plan.”

According to him, “The document revealed tonight is important proof of what we have been strongly asserting for years: the European Union is working maliciously together with the Palestinian Authority against the State of Israel. The matter is nothing less than preposterous – our allies, European governments, are actively working to revise the borders of our country. In years past, this would be grounds for wars between nations.”

“Tonight we are addressing the incoming government – the fight against the illegal takeover of Area C must be its first task. Leave everything else and preserve the nation’s lands, because there is nothing more important. The Zionist movement began its journey with the liberation of land. The loss of land to the enemy is a serious violation of national values and the bankruptcy of the Zionist dream,” he concluded.

MK Orit Strock of the Religious Zionism Party party called to put an end to the, “massive investment by the European Union in a subversive plan to establish a Palestinian state contrary to existing agreements and the law, and even worse, in cooperation with Israel’s Civil Administration.”

“This dangerous farce must stop, and it will stop: this is exactly what the elections were about, and we do not intend to give up the right and duty to protect all parts of our country against a hostile takeover,” she said.

Regavim also issued a statement following the expose.

“Once again, the façade has been stripped away from the ‘civil society,’ ‘humanitarian aid’ and ‘human rights’ organizations dedicated to undermining Israeli sovereignty.”

“The European Union’s massive involvement in the Palestinian Authority’s strategic annexation of Area C was exposed, once again, on Israeli television this evening – precisely as Regavim has been exposing it since our 2014 report, ‘The Last Colony,’ and in subsequent studies of the War of Attrition taking place on the ground in Judea and Samaria.

“The State of Israel must take decisive action against this brazen meddling, and prevent the establishment of a terrorist state in the heart of the Jewish homeland,” it said in the statement.

We need to work on revealing the truth, make sure younger Arabs are aware of it

Everything has already been said about the World Cup in Qatar and the enormous corruption that surrounded it. All the reasons in the world indicate that holding the World Cup in a terrorist-hideout country was a mistake and it did not deserve to host the football celebration, to begin with.

Still, the event has taken place, the fans increasingly filled the stands as the decisive moments were reached and the cameras aimed to capture moments of sporting camaraderie. However, Israeli media representatives reported from the field about harassment and unpleasant statements against Israel without the perpetrators having a real discussion on the subject. In the various videos, young Arabs are seen waving PLO flags and shouting “Fee Palestine,” and then disappearing. They do not conduct a dialogue on the matter and are not willing to hear counterarguments. They are not to blame for this reality after years of indoctrination.

Lumen accipe et imperti

This Latin motto of my old college, literally translated as “receive the light and pass it on”, is very relevant as we get ready to celebrate Chanukah, the Festival of Lights.

Michael Kuttner

As rabbis, communal leaders and politicians prepare their annual messages, ranging from the inspirational to the patently banal, I believe that it is time to actually look more closely at what is being preached.

Chanukah is certainly one of our Festivals that provide a myriad of different angles on which to hang a message. It appeals to religious and secular Jews alike, involved and non-involved, Jewish and, in recent times non-Jewish. Therein lays the confusing and often contradictory messages conveyed at this time of the year.

In an effort to understand the rhetoric which will be heading our way and sort out non-politically correct illusions which seem to multiply as the years go by I will try to separate the factual from the hallucinatory.

Chanukah means different things to different groups.

For some, it is a week-long excuse to indulge in showering children and grandchildren with gifts and presents.

Others will revel in the gastronomic delicacies associated with the Festival.

Lighting the Chanukiah is, of course, central to the Chag and this provides extensive opportunities for the introduction of many customs and traditions.

The story of Chanukah, with its Maccabean historical events and today’s relevance, is frequently ignored.

While observances and customs vary widely across the spectrum of Jewish life, certain trends have become obvious, which far too often are ignored because they raise inconvenient questions.

Jews are a diverse people, and therefore, their decisions on how to observe or ignore particular practices mirror this diversity. There is nothing wrong with this kaleidoscope of observances. However, when it starts to distort the original message and is hijacked in the name of whatever woke agenda is currently prevailing, then it is time to address the situation.

First, the commercialisation of Chanukah follows a familiar pattern. In the shtetls of Europe, children used to receive Chanukah gelt as a holiday present. This, later on, evolved in America into chocolate coins which had the advantage of attracting not only children but also adults. Then we had the greeting card industry latching on to the potential of selling imitation Christmas messages which, when one reads them today, makes one grimace. This has nowadays morphed into online electronic greetings, some of which are attuned to the Festival but most, unfortunately, descending into schmaltzy expressions of meaningless banality.

What all these latter-day commercial manifestations have in common is an effort to somehow compete with Xmas. In the far-flung Diaspora, the pressure to divert children’s attention away from the glitz and glamour of the Christian holiday has, in many cases, resulted in a total distortion of what Chanukah is really all about. Explaining, as many parents do, that eight days of receiving gifts is better than one day and thereby hoping that Jewish kids will somehow be insulated against the pervasive yuletide celebrations is a lost cause. Trying to compete against father Xmas, tinsel decorations, carols, Xmas parades and other such attractions promoted by commercial interests is also difficult. Dreidels certainly cannot compete with these attractions.

If children have a solid Jewish education and understanding of Judaism and their home reflects this, then there is no conflict. However, with assimilation and a lack of Jewish knowledge so prevalent today in the Diaspora combined with a growing non-affiliation to anything Jewish, the real message of Chanukah is being submerged by extraneous and conflicting diversions.

Like every Jewish Festival (except Yom Kippur), Chanukah provides an opportunity for culinary delights. However, when latkes and sufganiyot become the sole connection to anything Jewish, then the battle against assimilation is that much harder. When Judaism and Jewish history is reduced to gastronomical experiences alone, the whole ethos of why Chanukah is so important is lost.

Lighting the candles from one to eight over the days of the festival is a focal point. Diverse customs have developed over this. Whereas once upon a time, it was only the male head of the family who lit the Chanukiah, today, in an increasing number of families everyone participates. There is opposition in some quarters to women and girls fulfilling this mitzvah, but as they are obligated to light Shabbat and Festival candles, this current trend is not only logical but long overdue. Instead of a lone Menorah, households are now shining forth with a multitude of lights, involving every extended family member in the celebrations. In Israel, there is also an increasing trend to have the Chanukiot outside one’s house suitably enclosed in a glass case to protect it against the elements. Thank goodness we no longer need to hide our observances behind thick curtains and away from Jew-haters’ gaze.

Chabad has turned Chanukah into an annual mass event with huge replicas of the Menorah erected in parks and town squares in Diaspora communities and Israel. Accompanied by bands and other hoopla these are intended to attract affiliated and unaffiliated Jews and as a part of Chabad outreach efforts, it has added something dynamic which was previously missing. One negative side effect, unfortunately, is that in an effort to bring this Festival of Lights to the broader non-Jewish world, politicians and other invited personalities (Jewish and non-Jewish) are honoured to light the candles. As a public relations exercise, this is a great photo opportunity. Unfortunately, it also is a perfect time for those concerned to often spout meaningless slogans.

This brings me to the ultimate crux of where Chanukah observances are, in many cases trending.

What actually is this Festival all about?

After all, it is commemorating the Jewish struggle against pagan rites, the desecration of the Temple, the suppression of Jewish religious freedom and most importantly the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in our own land.

These critical components are increasingly being swept under the carpet in many countries and communities today in the name of the new woke religion of political correctness and resurgence in the very assimilationist phenomena which sparked the whole Maccabean rebellion in the first place.

In an increasing number of households, especially in the USA, Chanukah bushes now prevail with the Chanukiah taking its forlorn place together with an impressive Xmas tree. The emphasis is less on adherence to Jewish observance and learning the lessons of our historical experiences and more on blurring the distinctiveness of our traditions so that they blend in with prevailing and increasingly secular dogmas.

Take note of the rhetoric that will be issued forth as we approach Chanukah. There will be plenty of references to how light overcomes darkness, the few defeating the many and oil lasting for eight days.

How many of those pontificating in our direction will actually connect the dots between the Maccabean struggle for religious and political independence and sovereignty with today’s glaring hypocrisy revolving around Jewish sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, plus the delegitimisation of our connection to Jerusalem?

How many politicians and communal leaders will highlight today’s international campaign to divorce the Jewish connection with those self-same places which revolve around the commemoration of Chanukah?

How many will dare to protest the ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, which after all, should be the core of Chanukah? The Maccabeans cleansed the Temple of its pagan desecration and re-established sovereignty there. Doesn’t that somehow shine a spotlight on today’s scandalous situation?

Without committed and involved Jews, the lessons and lights of Chanukah cannot be passed on to succeeding generations.

At this time when we have been blessed to participate in the restoration of the Jewish People to their ancient homeland, the lessons of Chanukah could not be clearer.