Win like Hanukkah

Today is the start of the Jewish festival of "Hanukkah", many people think of it as the Jewish equivalent of Christmas (for Christians) but in reality it's the celebration of an ancient event that took place in 164 BCE when (after a long period of repression by the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire) Jews living in Judea rebelled under a leader named "Judas Maccabeus" and managed to re-capture Jerusalem, which was a significant early victory. The full revolt started in 167 BCE and ended in 160 BCE with the Seleucids gaining control of Judea, however the conflict between the Jews and the Seleucids continued until 134 BCE when the Maccabees eventually attained independence (for a while at least)

People (particularly younger people) look at the current conflict in Gaza between Jews and Muslims and think it's a 20th century thing, they don't venture back into the history of the place and discover it's affiliation with Jews and their culture. 

Before the Hellenists cracked down on Jews in 170 BCE they were persecuted by the Persians around 500 BCE who exiled many of them to Babylon, then Alexander the Great took over in 338 BCE followed by empires like the Seleucids (i.e. Greek in origin) Then the Egyptians had a go followed by more Greeks and eventually the Romans turned up in 1 BCE and (as an act of suppression) renamed the whole area (including present day Jordan) "Palestine". After the Romans came the Byzantine period and we switch to an era of Christian persecution, this lasted right up to the Crusades and the middle ages when the place seems to have been ruled by a mixed bag of Christian and Muslim Caliphates, the Jews were (largely) forced to leave. After that the Ottomans moved in and Jews were even further scattered to the four corners of the Earth, and after the first world war the territory was briefly under British control. It was only in 1948, after WWII that the major powers at the time decided to create a Jewish homeland on it's original site and the region was divided up into Israel, West Bank and Gaza.

History shows us that this small fragment of land has been the centre of religious and cultural strife for centuries, fights over land, water, pagan rituals, resources, shiny buildings, gods and customs have been constant. This patch of land has been conquered and re-claimed and conquered again by many different armies, Jewish, Pagan, Christian and others over the course of many bloody and unjust wars. The conflict today is just the latest one in a long line, and as with any war there are countless injustices and innocent victims, the question is, will the rest of the world let Israel finally win and what will happen if they do?