The Israel Haters Who Stole Hanukkah

Old and busted: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas

New hotness: The Israel Haters Who Stole Hanukkah (hat tip: Simone)

A couple of Israel haters (and, in the case of Martillo, an antisemite and Holocaust denier) have posted to Facebook claims that palestinians descend from the Maccabees.

siddiqui

martillo

Some people who seem to disagree with this claim are..the palestinians themselves. They have long denied the existence of the Temple and, given the whole story of Hanukkah revolves around the re-dedication of the Temple, Siddiqui and Martillo are contradicting their own heroes.

Talk about having your cake lattkes and eating it.

Update: Our own Judge Dan called it.

Update: And speaking of Israel haters and Hanukkah, this one refuses to celebrate it:

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/12/happy-hanukkah-thanks-but-not-for-me.html

Given the realities of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, I find the hypocrisy of Hanukkah intolerable. It’s OK for us Jews to celebrate (hugely and spectacularly) our efforts to liberate our own people from occupation, no matter the cost, no matter who lives or dies on our side or the other. But it is not OK for the Palestinians. No-one condemns Judas Maccabeus and his rebels as terrorists. They are revered as freedom fighters with a just and even divinely decreed cause regardless of their brutality. The Greek occupiers are despised venomously in the story of Hanukkah, but no-one thinks there’s a problem with Israel being an occupier.

Of course at this point supporters of Israel are likely to say that the comparison is unfair. Israel isn’t an empire like Greece was; it is only trying to be a safe haven for the long persecuted Jewish people. But do the reasons behind occupation and colonisation matter when their evils and crimes are the same?

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I used to like Hanukkah as a child because it’s fun for children. You get to light pretty candles, sing really nice, albeit gory, traditional songs (Maoz Tzur is positively shocking if you know what the words mean), and eat yummy sweet, fatty food, like fried potato patties (latkes) and jam doughnuts (sufganiot). (Both of these are traditional Eastern European dishes, not really Jewish as such, but Israel has always been dominated by Ashkenazi culture.) So when I gave up all of this years ago, it was a little sad, but it’s been a worthwhile sacrifice to make so I can live according to my ethics.

It’s time for Jewish supporters of Israel around the world, and in particular for Israeli Jews, to wake up and see the terrible irony of celebrating Hanukkah while Israel occupies the Palestinians. Why can’t they see that they are playing the part of the Greeks and that the Palestinians are responding the same way the Jewish rebels did back then? If Jewish culture glorifies and celebrates our rebellious and uncompromising spirit, why does it condemn that same spirit in others?

But shouldn’t she be celebrating it because the Maccabees were the ancestors of the palestinians, who managed to rededicate the “non-existent” Temple?

If your head is spinning like a dreidel right now, that is ok. These people just can’t make any sense.

Which happens when you lie and can’t synchronize your stories.

9 thoughts on “The Israel Haters Who Stole Hanukkah”

  1. after printing the above jew hate screed…can philly boy’s blog continue to insist that it is simply anti zionist/israel?

    in her hate for jews, she cant even get the history of sufganiot right

    what a filthy little Hellenist

  2. Wait they are saying that they are descended from the Hashmonians?

    So many people who know talmud know what it says near the end of Kiddushin that the last Hashmoneanen proclaimed.

    http://www.jewishhistory.org/review-of-the-hasmonean-era/
    She was the granddaughter of Hyrcanus. Herod married her to reinforce the illusory claim that he was part of the Hasmonean Dynasty. His love for her was unrequited. She viewed herself as the victim of an arranged marriage. After Herod had her grandfather and mother executed, she attempted to commit suicide, but was unsuccessful. However, he then executed her.They had two sons together. Herod eventually had them executed also. With their execution there was no living remnant left of the Hasmoneans. That is why the Talmud (Kiddushin 70b) declared that anyone who claims to be from the House of the Hasmoneans is really descended from non-Jewish slaves.

    1. Both. Neither. Matrilineal descent or halachic conversion. Not the racialist, genetics-centered view of “blood and [therefore rights to the] soil” the anti-Zionists hold. That view belongs in an Aryan Nations convention, not in Judaism.

      1. Sounds like it’s a lot different being a Jew than a Methodist. In the Methodist Church they let you in if you go through the confirmation process (not that rigorous) and participate in a Christmas cookie exchange.

  3. Joachim Martillo i think is a Jewish convert to Islam so he doesn’t count.Also i think he’s supposed to be a financial adviser so i guess no one is interested in his advice. Obviously a bitter little man. As far as weiss go’s he has many problems.His partner on his blog is gay does he ever wonder what would happen to him if he was walking hand in hand with his lover while kissing i gaza

  4. If we’re into historical analogies, the best one for the Pal-Arab squatters would be the Cutheans, the Samaritan inhabitants who made no end of trouble for the Jewish returnees from Babylon. Among other things, they tried to stop the rebuilding of the Temple by telling the Persian authorities it was part of a Jewish plot to rebel against the Persian empire.

    Some things don’t change much. We could say modern anti-Zionism is too a neo-Cuthean ideology, predicated on the same belief as the Cutheans’ that a hiatus of the Jewish presence on the Land of Israel somehow voided the Jewish nation’s right to it. But one day everyone will recognize that the divine lease of the Land of Israel -and no other place in the world! – to the Jewish people, for the purpose of His worship, has no expiration date, no matter how long our transgressions had caused us to be away from our one and only home.

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