Maccabees and the IDF: A ‘Sacrilegious’ Comparison

Antiochus Epiphanes, the Syrian-Greek villain of the Chanukah narrative, was unquestionably a very bad man. He banned the study of Torah, the observance of Shabbat, the celebration of Rosh Chodesh, and the performance of ritual circumcision.  He also imposed the worship of idols and consumption of pork on his resistant Jewish population.  In short, he was determined to transform practicing Jews into assimilated Hellenizers.  That said, his villainy pales in comparison to that of today’s Palestinian national movements whose covenants call for anti-Semitic genocide.  Not only do they seek the utter annihilation of Jews in Israel, they view diaspora Jews as legitimate targets.  Antiochus was a cultural imperialist, which is bad enough.  The IDF’s enemies are genocidal, which is even worse.

In addition, the Maccabees’ campaign against the Seleucid Empire was regional.  Its theatre spanned part of the ancient Levant, but went no further.  In contrast, the IDF is pitted against virtually the entire world united against the Jewish State.  Not only has it been defending its people against an array of totalitarian Middle Eastern dictatorships, militias armed to the teeth, and indoctrinated lone wolf terrorists — it has been viciously smeared by the United Nations, the ICC, so-called human rights organizations, most of the international press, elite universities, and scores of countries as disparate and far flung as Ireland, South Africa, and New Zealand.  Despite the IDF’s unparalleled efforts to distinguish between enemy combatants and civilians, nothing has ever whipped up savage global outrage like Israel’s just response to the barbarism of October 7.  Even many of our best friends in the international community have engaged in shameful moral equivalency, coyly blaming the victim by declaring Israel’s right to defend itself while, in the same breath, bemoaning the “unconscionable” suffering in Gaza — as if the Jewish State, not Hamas, is at fault.  Other examples of such ethical fence straddling include providing Israel with some urgently needed, promised and paid-for arms while punitively embargoing others; and condemning violent pro-Palestinian demonstrations while fecklessly opining that the rioters might “have a point.”  We don’t deny that there are some — all too few — who have consistently and unequivocally stood up for Israel in her lonely moment of existential struggle, but rarely has there been a case in the history of international conflict that better illustrates the description of “the weak against the strong, the few against the many.”

So what about the Jewish response to such universal, unadulterated evil?  No one would gainsay the Maccabees’ strengths as nimble and resourceful fighters, but it would be hard to find in the annals of global warfare anything that could match the tactical ingenuity (e.g. the exploding beepers that decimated Hezbollah’s command structure without collateral civilian damage), daring (e.g. the elimination of Hamas’ chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, Iran while he was a guest of the state), technological innovation (e.g. the Arrow, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome defense systems), and success in transforming the strategic realities of an entire region (e.g. the crippling of the so-called Axis of Resistance) demonstrated by the IDF.  Moreover, though by modern Israel’s precedents of lightning-fast wars the current year-long engagement seems like an eternity, we ought to appreciate its remarkable achievements within their historical context.  It took the Maccabees a full three years of combat to reach the Temple Mount and decades of protracted struggle to wrest full independence from the Seleucids — independence they were able to sustain for only forty years.

Of course, the Maccabees chalked up some breathtaking victories that modern Israel has not.  They rededicated the Temple; extended sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and even a sizable strip of territory on the east bank of the Jordan River; and, memorably, merited the miracle of the oil.  Clearly, our ancestors were no slackers.  But in light of the brutality and scope of Israel’s worldwide enemies and in view of the IDF’s ingenuity, daring, innovation, and transformative response in just over a year, there can be no doubt that were our Hasmonean fathers able to witness today’s events, they would feel flattered by the comparison to their sons.

Living in Modi’in — the home of the ancient Maccabees — my wife, Rachel, and I feel privileged to have been eyewitnesses to the monumental wonders that have unfolded all around us this past year.

“Praised are You, O Lord our God, Who not only performed miracles for our fathers in those days, but for us in our own time!”