On this Chanukah, menorahs will be lit not only in the land of Israel, from Jerusalem to Gaza, but in Lebanon and on the heights of Mt. Hermon overlooking Syria. Vacationing families will visit the waterfalls of the Hermon Stream in the Golan Heights from which the Syrian Greek armies had descended thousands of years ago to conquer Israel leading to the events of. Chanukah.

The lights of the menorahs over darkness are a reminder that miracles can still happen here.

The Syrian Greeks had called the area Paneas after their god Pan and the Arab Muslim conquerors had retained the pagan name as Baneas due to the inability of the so-called ‘Palestinian’ occupiers to pronounce the letter ‘P’. In the original Chanukah, the Maccabees had driven the Syrian Greeks and their enforced paganism out of the land and during the Six-Day War their latter-day descendants also pushed out the Syrian invaders at great cost.