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Chanukah Guide for the Perplexed 2021 Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger,

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://bit.ly/3cHZFOl

Jewish national liberation holiday.  Chanukah (evening of November 28 – December 6, 2021) is the only Jewish holiday that commemorates an ancient national liberation struggle in the Land of Israel, unlike the national liberation holidays, Passover, Sukkot/Tabernacles and Shavu’ot/Pentecost, which commemorate the Exodus from slavery in Egypt to liberation in the land of Israel, and unlike Purim, which commemorates liberation from a Persian attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.   

Historical context  Chanukah is narrated in the four Books of the Maccabees, The Scroll of Antiochus and The Wars of the Jews.

In 323 BCE, the Greek Empire was split into three independent and rival mini-empires (Greece-Seleucid/Syria-Ptolemaic/Egypt), following the death of Alexander the Great (Alexander III) who held Judaism in high esteem.

In 175 BCE, the Seleucid/Syrian Emperor Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes claimed the Land of Israel, and suspected that the Jews were allies of his Ptolemaic/Egyptian enemy.  The Seleucid emperor was known for eccentric behavior, hence his name, Epiphanes, which means “divine manifestation.”  He aimed to exterminate Judaism and convert Jews to Hellenism. In 169 BCE, he devastated Jerusalem, attempted to massacre the Jewish population, and outlawed the practice of Judaism.

In 166/7 BCE, a Jewish rebellion was led by members of the non-establishment Hasmonean (Maccabee) family – from the rural town of Modi’in, half way between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean – headed by Mattityahu, the priest, and his five sons, Yochanan, Judah, Shimon, Yonatan and Eleazar. They fought the Seleucid occupier and established Jewish independence.  The Hasmonean dynasty was replete with external and internal wars and lasted until 37 BCE, when Herod the Great (a proxy of Rome) defeated Antigonus II Mattathias.    

The success of the Maccabees on the battlefield was consistent with the reputation of Jews as superb warriors, who were frequently hired as mercenaries by Egypt, Syria, Carthage, Rome and other global and regional powers.

When ordered by Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Seleucid region to end the Jewish “occupation” of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Gaza, Gezer and Akron, Shimon the Maccabee responded: “We have not occupied a foreign land…. We have liberated the land of our forefathers from foreign occupation (Book of Maccabees A: 15:33).”

Chanukah and the Land of Israel.  Chanukah highlights the centrality of the Land of Israel in the formation of Jewish history, religion and culture. The mountain ridges of Judea and Southern Samaria (the West Bank) were the platform for the Maccabean military battles: Mitzpah (the burial site of the Prophet Samuel, overlooking Jerusalem), Beth El (the site of the Ark of the Covenant and Judah the Maccabee’s initial headquarters), Beth Horon (Judah’s victory over Seron), Hadashah (Judah’s victory over Nicanor), Beth Zur (Judah’s victory over Lysias), Ma’aleh Levona (Judah’s victory over Apolonius), Adora’yim (a Maccabean fortress), Eleazar (named after Mattityahu’s youngest Maccabee son), Beit Zachariya (Judah’s first defeat), Ba’al Hatzor (where Judah was defeated and killed), Te’qoah, Mikhmash and Gophnah (bases of Shimon and Yonatan), the Judean Desert, etc.

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Hanukkah celebrates victory in struggle to maintain Judaism – opinion Facing existential threats of annihilation led by Iran, other Muslim countries, terrorism and the Islamic movement, we ask the same questions that our ancestors asked: How can we survive? By Moshe Dann

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hanukkah-celebrates-victory-in-struggle-to-maintain-judaism-opinion-686901

At the end of the Second Temple period, Jews struggled against the influence of Hellenism and the cultures and armies of Greece and Rome. They struggled to maintain Judaism and Jewish values and to preserve their independence as a nation-state in Eretz Yisrael – the Land of Israel. Their struggle was not only against external enemies but also internal divisions in a society divided among religious and political factions. They had a Temple, the focus of religious inspiration – at least for many – wise rabbinic authorities, a thriving economy and a powerful army. What happened?

As noted in the ArtScroll book, Chanukah: Its History, Observance, And Significance, “the famous ‘miracle of the lights,’ when a one-day supply of pure olive oil burned for eight days, took place three years after the beginning of the Hasmonean revolt. That is the only miracle that the Talmud (Shabbat 21b) mentions in its brief description of the Hanukkah events. The Al HaNissim liturgy, however, which recounts the festival’s origin and which is inserted into the Hanukkah prayers, tells a different story. There, the eight-day miracle of the oil is not even mentioned. There, the emphasis is on the miracles of the military triumph.”

Rabbi Dr. Shubert Spero, in his book Holocaust and Return to Zion, writes that Hanukkah is “about the condition of basic unity and fraternity of Jewish society during the first century CE. The rabbis were referring to the disintegration of the Jewish people in Judea into a cluster of warring and bickering sects, of which Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots and New Christians were only the major ones.

“These religious and political divisions were the background for the unjustified hatred that destroyed the national unity of the Jewish people. There no longer was a common purpose or a felt mutual responsibility to support a national Jewish polity. This was the underlying cause of the disaster.”

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Diana West on RFK Jr. in Milan: Resist, Resist, Resist, Resist

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.conservativehq.org/post/diana-west-on-rfk-jr-in-milan-resist-resist-resist-resist

Our friend Diana West, author of several must-read books, including American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character and The Red Thread, A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy, just posted this article alerting us to an astonishing speech Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. delivered in Milan, Italy.

We share Ms. West’s column with her kind permission because Kennedy’s remarks have received no coverage in the establishment media and, as she observed, are “unique among national American figures, sizes up the pandemic response for what it is: a coordinated assault on liberal democracy all over the world, which has nothing to do with public health, but which, in the USA, gutted our Bill of Rights and thus robbed us of our constitutionally protected liberties.”

Ms. West’s column begins:

News media have failed to cover any of the above, which is actually solid evidence of the importance of these events. But why do I call Kennedy’s speech historic?

For its scope, wisdom and passion, this address, which I’ve transcribed below, is certainly memorable. Kennedy, unique among national American figures, sizes up the pandemic response for what it is: a coordinated assault on liberal democracy all over the world, which has nothing to do with public health, but which, in the USA, gutted our Bill of Rights and thus robbed us of our constitutionally protected liberties. He easily dispatches with the C19 clot shot by using Pfizer’s own research data, which tell us that for every one life Pfizer claims to have saved with its “vaccine,” four lives were lost to heart attacks. (This data, Kennedy says, is to be found in a table of Pfizer research filed with the FDA.)

But it is Kennedy’s courage in giving this speech that is epic.

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Losing Confidence in the Pillars of Our Civilization Conservatives now have lost their former traditional confidence in many of the pillars of our civilization. And with good reason. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/24/losing-confidence-in-the-pillars-of-our-civilization/

Millions of citizens long ago concluded that professional sports, academia, and entertainment were no longer disinterested institutions, but far Left and deliberately hostile to Middle America. 

Yet American conservatives still adamantly supported the nation’s traditional investigatory, intelligence, and military agencies—especially when they came under budgetary or cultural attacks. 

Not so much anymore. 

For the first time in memory, conservatives now connect the FBI hierarchy with bureaucratic bloat, political bias, and even illegality. 

In the last five years, the FBI was mostly in the news for the checkered careers of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Robert Mueller, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok. Add in the criminality of convicted FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith. 

The colossal FBI-driven “Russian collusion” hoax was marked by leaking of confidential FBI memos, forged documents, improper surveillance, and serial disinformation. 

Prior heads of the CIA and FBI, as well as the director of national intelligence, have at times either not told the truth under oath or claimed amnesia—without legal repercussions. 

Mention the military to conservative Americans these days, and they unfortunately associate its leadership with the disastrous flight from Afghanistan. Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility—much less resigned—for the worst military fiasco of the last half-century. 

Instead, Joe Biden and the top generals traded charges that the other was responsible for the calamity. Or both insisted the abject flight was a logistical masterpiece.

Never in U.S. history have so many retired four-star admirals and generals disparaged their president with charges of being either a traitor, a liar, a fascist, or a virtual Nazi. 

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Corrupted science: The Left’s Machiavellian bludgeon By Michael J. Maxwell

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/corrupted_science_the_lefts_machiavellian_bludgeon.html

“For all intents and purposes, today’s science is steeped in politically charged leftist manipulation, propaganda, and skullduggery. ”

Science is a noble human endeavor with the goal of discovering, examining, testing, explaining, harnessing, and preserving physical nature for the benefit and advancement of humankind. Moreover, the virtuous pursuits of science serve to augment our understanding of the previously unknown.

In its purest application, science is never truly settled. Science is not suited to reach concrete conclusions on the how, when, where, or why of the cosmic mysteries of the material universe, its creation, or Creator. For science, in its historically accepted proper application, is not based on conjecture alone. Scientific theories must be proven factually, through exhaustive experimentation and testing, to become relevant, applied, and useful.

The publishing of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity in 1916 was followed by extraordinarily frustrating, peer-generated attacks on his groundbreaking science. A booklet was published in 1931 titled A Hundred Authors Against Einstein, featuring many ill-informed contributions. In total, 121 authors are identified as opponents to Einstein’s vaunted Theory of Relatively.

Today, Einstein’s gravitational theory has withstood all the frontal attacks by his peers, many of whom were seemingly jealous, egotistical scientists who forever tarnished their own reputations, becoming infamous naysayers of Einstein’s genius.

Did Einstein relish these inferior peer reviews? Of, course not! But did they serve to prove the validity of his theory beyond a reasonable doubt? Absolutely!

In the current state of scientific inquiry, even Einstein would be shouted down and classified a heretic had he stood up to and challenged the murky, politically correct, unchallengeable, “settled science” of climate change or COVID-19 mandates. Why? Because, the vacuous term “settled science” is now a sacred cow of the tyrannical, propagandizing, leftist crusaders, no matter how ambiguous and errant it is.

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23 Aliens Previously Convicted of Homicide Charged With Illegal Reentry in Arizona And that’s in Biden’s first nine months. Terence P. Jeffrey

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/23-aliens-previously-convicted-homicide-charged-terence-p-jeffrey/

Since February, which was President Joe Biden’s first full month in office, 23 aliens who had previously been convicted of homicide in the United States were charged in Arizona with illegally reentering this country.

We know this because the office of the U.S. attorney for Arizona regularly publishes these numbers. It puts out a monthly report on “immigration and border crimes” in its district, which encompasses all of Arizona.

In February alone, for example, the office reported that 190 foreign nationals in Arizona had been charged with “illegal reentry” to this country. Among these, 151 had already been convicted of a non-immigration crime in the United States. These included 44 aliens who had what the U.S. attorney’s office described as “violent crime convictions.” Two of these had already been convicted of “homicide” in the United States.

But that did not stop these two from allegedly returning illegally to this country after they had been deported.

Among those whom the office of the U.S. attorney charged from February through October with illegally reentering this country were 400 aliens who had previously been convicted here of what the U.S. attorney characterized as a “violent crime.”

There were also aliens who had previously been convicted of crimes that are not characterized as violent but that could clearly pose a danger to the public. These included 320 who had previously been convicted of driving under the influence and 846 who had previous “drug crime convictions.”

The return to the United States of deported aliens who had previously been convicted of homicide did not stop with the two charged in Arizona in February with illegal reentry.

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Thanksgiving Day: Another Front in the Leftist War on America Guess who wants to “reconsider” and “reevaluate” America’s day to give gratitude?Bruce Thornton

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/thanksgiving-day-another-front-leftist-war-america-bruce-thornton-0/

For going on a century, the international Left has been seeking to discredit and undermine the United States. One front in this war comprises attacks on American history, monuments, and the traditional holidays that recognize and celebrate this country’s exceptional institutions, especially political and economic freedom, and the unalienable rights of individuals.

Having failed serially and ruined every country it has governed, the Left has a deep hatred for the nation and principles that achieved what socialism could only promise. Defending our national traditions, then, is not about time off from work, shopping, overeating, and binging on football, but about our being grateful for our freedom, and the importance of the history of our nation’s beginning.

Given the Left’s long animus, there’s no surprise in a story about several American universities gathering at an event that asks whether Americans should “reconsider” and “reevaluate”  Thanksgiving. According to the event’s advertising,

Starting in 1970, many Americans, led by Indigenous protesters, believed that Thanksgiving should be rededicated as a National Day of Mourning to reflect the centuries-long displacement and persecution of Native Americans. The recent shift from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day reflects a changing national mood. . . .  “Should Americans reconsider Thanksgiving when wrestling with our country’s complicated past?”

Such thinking reflects leftist revisionist history of the Howard Zinn and 1619 Project ilk, which in fact doesn’t correct the alleged partial and partisan historical record of America’s birth and scrub away its self-justifying myths, but rather simply replaces that history with an even more egregiously mythic one that violates every historiographical canon, especially the requirement that we avoid presentism––judging the past by the ideologically tainted standards of today.

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Manchin Urges Biden to Restore Keystone XL Pipeline By Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/manchin-urges-biden-to-restore-keystone-xl-pipeline/

Senator Joe Manchin (D., W. Va.) on Tuesday called on President Biden to reinstate the Keystone XL pipeline as the U.S. struggles with gas shortages and skyrocketing prices.

“I continue to call on President Biden to responsibly increase energy production here at home and to reverse course to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built which would have provided our country with up to 900,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada, one of our closest allies,” the moderate senator said in a statement.

“To be clear, this is about American energy independence and the fact that hard-working Americans should not depend on foreign actors, like OPEC+, for our energy security and instead focus on the real challenges facing our country’s future,” Manchin said, referring to the group of major oil-producing countries.

The statement came after the Biden administration announced plans to release 50 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to combat soaring gas prices.

Manchin, who is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has previously advocated against Biden’s decision to revoke a permit for the pipeline. In February, he said that pipelines nationwide “continue to be the safest mode to transport our oil and natural gas resources, and they support thousands of high-paying, American union jobs.″

However, Biden has suggested that the U.S. end its dependence on fossil fuel and has committed to forging a path for the U.S. to have a carbon-free electric grid by 2035 and net zero emissions by 2050.

“This is the decade that will determine the answer. This decade,” Biden said during an international climate summit earlier this month. “The science is clear: We only have a brief window left before us to raise our ambitions and to raise — to meet the task that’s rapidly narrowing.”

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How Democrats Ruin Everything: The New York Times By Kyle Smith

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-democrats-ruin-everything-the-new-york-times/

This New York Times video doesn’t exactly shout, “Vote Republican” because everyone involved in it, and everyone it is aimed at, is a Democrat. But if Democrats can mess things up this badly, what other conclusion are we supposed to draw? Democrats make things worse is the resounding message here. I agree, except unlike the production team of the video, I don’t find this baffling.

The message of the video is that Democrats are hypocrites who don’t live up to their values. Of course they don’t! But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that they make everything worse. Watch the video. It’ll knock you out that this came from the Times.

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Five Moderate Dem Senators Reject Biden’s Pick for Top Bank Watchdog By Caroline Downey

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/five-moderate-dem-senators-reject-bidens-pick-for-top-bank-watchdog/

Five prominent moderate Democratic senators have vowed to reject President Biden’s nominee, Saule Omarova, for the nation’s top bank watchdog role over her aggressive approach to regulating the financial sector.

Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee Jon Tester, Mark Warner, and Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.), as well as Democratic Senators John Hickenlooper and Mark Kelly have all declared their opposition to Omarova as head of Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Biden officials still endorse Omarova, even though her confirmation is increasingly unlikely given these lawmakers’ disapproval.

“The White House continues to strongly support her historic nomination,” a White House official told Axios.

“Saule Omarova is eminently qualified for this position,” the official added. “She has been treated unfairly since her nomination with unacceptable red-baiting from Republicans like it’s the McCarthy era.”

The former law professor drew criticism from Republicans during a congressional hearing last week for her past academic works in which she advocated to “end banking as we know it.” Her position would preside over lenders holding an extremely high value of assets. Senator Kennedy grilled her over her purported praise of a number of economic practices exercised by the Soviet Union.