Chanukah: Armed Jews Week

That's the idea of David Kopel's post last year describing Chanukah, which he ties in with more current historical events:

Although there is a widespread myth that Jews in the Holocaust were passive, they were actually more active than any other conquered people. In 1942-43, Jews constituted half of all the partisans in Poland. Overall, about thirty thousand Jewish partisans fought in Eastern Europe. There were armed revolts in over forty different ghettos, mostly in Eastern Poland.

In other parts of Europe, Jews likewise joined the resistance at much higher rates than the rest of the population. Unlike in Eastern Europe, though, Jews were generally able to participate as individuals in the national resistance, rather than having to fight in separate units.

For example, in France, Jews amounted to than one percent of French population, but comprised about 15-20 percent of the French Resistance.

In Greece too, Jews were disproportionately involved in the resistance. In Thessaly, a Jewish partisan unit in the mountains was led by the septuagenarian Rabbi Moshe Pesah, who carried his own rifle. The Athenian Jew Jacques Costis led the team which demolished the Gorgopotamos Bridge, thereby breaking the link between the mainland and Peloponnesian Peninsula, and interfering with the delivery of supplies to Rommel’s Afrika Korps.

Kopel develops this theme and ties it in with Zionism and the return to Israel:

Hanukkah teaches that God’s redemption of the Jewish people is a continuing act of history—and so does Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust. The resistance proved to the world that Jews were active fighters, and not mere passive victims. That resistance (most famously, in the Warsaw Ghetto) was an indispensable step towards the rebirth of the modern state of Israel.

Palestinians have compared Israelis to Nazis.
Palestinians have accused Israel of attempting a Holocaust.
Palestinians have claimed to be descended from the Philistines.

We have yet to hear Palestinian Arabs publicly comparing Sharon to Antiochus (though Kopel did receive emails making that claim).

But give it time.

Technorati Tag: Hanukkah and Hanukah and Chanukah.