From lighting a menorah, to giving out gelt, to eating cheese—find out how these Hanukkah traditions began.
Each year, Jews around the world celebrate an eight-day winter holiday known as Hanukkah (also spelled “Chanukah” and several other ways) on the 25th day of the month of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, typically falling in November or December on the Gregorian calendar.
The eight-day Festival of Lights marks an event dating to the second century B.C.E.
Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Second Temple of Jerusalem during the second century B.C., following the triumph of a small group of Jewish rebels, known as the Maccabees, against their oppressors the Greek-Syrians, who had defiled the temple by erecting an altar to Zeus and sacrificing pigs within its sacred walls. In order to rededicate the temple, the Maccabees had to light a menorah that would burn within the temple at all times. However, they only had enough pure olive oil to last for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, leaving time to find a fresh supply of oil.
The IDF says troops of the 460th Armored Brigade and the Nahal Brigade’s 50th Battalion discovered one of the largest caches of weapons yet during operations in the northern Gaza Strip.
There is often an opinion among the public that small countries cannot be influential and powerful because they are unimportant. Proponents of such a position claim that small states, due to their small surface area and small population, must submit to the larger powers in the region. Such a point of view is unconvincing assessment that does not take into account either history or the current geopolitical picture.
With the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas crossing the 55-day mark, no breakthrough seems to be in sight that could bring hostilities to a stop despite the successful exchange of some hostages. As Palestinians in Gaza continue to face the brunt of Israeli military reaction to the terror attacks of 7 October orchestrated by Hamas, tensions over the crisis can increasingly be seen expanding into other theatres, particularly where Iran-supported militias are looking to act together as part of a ‘resistance’ narrative.
Les soulèvements spontanés qui ont eu lieu en Syrie étaient officiellement dirigés par une coalition de « modérés » – la célèbre Armée syrienne libre/ASL – se révoltant contre le régime brutal de Bachar al-Assad. Mais en réalité, il y avait peu de « modérés » en Syrie et il n’y avait pas de soulèvement « spontané ». C’était Jabhat al-Nusra, la version syrienne d’Al-Qaïda, qui menait la révolte. Et il s’agissait d’une révolte dirigée de l’étranger, planifiée de nombreuses années auparavant.
On December 6, 2023, Lebanese Hizbullah’s Al-Ahed News released an exclusive interview with Hamas national relations official Ali Barakah.[1] In the interview, Barakah asserted that Hamas is “doing well” against the Israeli counterattack and that it is fighting in accordance with its predetermined “defensive plan” of action. He also said that Hamas continues to aim to free all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli detention and will use Israeli hostages to that end.
Attributing a role for Syrian refugees in fostering a positive chapter in the beleaguered Türkiye-U.S. relationship may seem like a stretch, but the Türkiye Compact proposed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) leads one to think otherwise.
Radical attitudes
According to Hamas, it is the religious duty of Muslims to attack Jews. Compromises and agreements as a way to solve the Palestinian issue are expressly rejected and replaced by armed struggle. Hamas first used a suicide bombing in April 1993, five months before PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords, which gave the Palestinians administration in the Gaza Strip and the city of Jericho. On the first morning after the agreement was signed, a Hamas bomber tried to blow up a police station in Gaza. This was followed by three more suicide attacks. In the fifth attack in October 1993, an attack was carried out on the headquarters of the Israeli army in the West Bank.
The government of Turkey has threatened to invade and annex Greek islands in the Aegean Sea for at least the past five years.
[T]he Turkish media continues to falsely and repeatedly to claim that “152 Greek islands and islets in the Aegean belong to Turkey”. These islands historically and legally… belong to Greece.