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Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/12/happy-hanukkah-and-am-yisrael-chai/
Happy Hanukkah - the Jewish Nation Lives
(National Review) Jon Levin - Zionism is the modern enactment of Hanukkah's assertion of the right to Jewish independence, and the necessity of the Jewish state even for Jews outside of Israel. The deep Zionism of the Hanukkah story resonates especially in this era of endemic anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Hanukkah celebrates Jews' successful assertion of their right to live freely in their ancestral homeland with Jerusalem as its capital, and warns that without Israel, Jews cannot be truly free anywhere. Only an independent Jewish state can guarantee Jewish wellbeing. This necessity has never been more obvious. Around the world, governments turn a blind eye as their Jewish residents are attacked in the streets, pushed out of intellectual, civil, and artistic institutions, and see their religious and communal institutions vilified, vandalized, and burned. Meaningful consequences for the perpetrators have been sparse. And efforts to prevent attacks or combat incitement against Jews seem ineffectual at best. The intellectual elite feigns ignorance and helplessness, declares neutrality, or outright supports attacks on Jews in the name of a circuitous system of morality in which all Jews are collectively guilty because some Jews commit the crime of defending themselves. Despite the intervening centuries, Jewish acceptance, safety and wellbeing outside of the Jewish state are still contingent; Jews might be treated well by their neighbors and protected by the government, but only if it's politically prudent, Israel behaves, and the Jews aren't too Jewish. Israel's existence ensures Jews always have a place to go.