Hitchens is quite right - the Maccabean rebellion was a struggle between Jewish fundamentalists and Hellenizing Jews rather than against the Seleucid Antiochus III. For all that, his diatribe against the modern holiday of Hanukah misses the point completely. To a large number if not an absolute majority of contemporary Jews, the lighting of the candles does not so much commemorate the purification of the ancient temple after unhallowed usage as celebrate the post-Holocaust empowerment of a surviving remnant of a people affirming its own still threatened existence. (And how on earth, Mr. Hitchens, can you ascribe the rise of Islam to a few wretched Jewish tribes scratching a living in the arid wastes of the Arabian peninsula?)

I know that Hitchen's article was posted two weeks ago, but Hanukkah relates closely to Christmas and Idu-l-Adha. Click on Hanukkah, Christmas, and `Idu-l-Adha to read my reply.

I as an agnostic Israeli Jew tend to concur with voiceover.

For orthodox Israeli Jews the narrative of purification and rededication (in Hebrew: Hanukah) is paramount. But essentially it has become a children's holiday in Israel celebrated by all- religious and secular- with jelly doughnuts and songs next to the candles

In retrospect I find it hard to identify fully with my peasant ancestors who rejected such elements of Greek civilisation as art, drama, poetry, science, mathematics, , philosophy and the idea of "mens sana in corpore sano". On the other hand if it were not for their heroism we would not be here today and this discussion could not have happened.

I do not think the Maccabees would have made much sense of this debate either.