Photo: AFP
Hannukah starts at sundown tonight. To many Jews around the world, the eight-day holiday is a festive occasion, especially for children, who eagerly await dreidels and chocolate coins. But in Israel, which is now in its third month of war, the holiday arrives at a time of great despair and trepidation. ABC News correspondent Jordana Miller has been covering the war since Hamas brutally attacked on October 7th. She made her daily report on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning and discussed the mood among Israelis as the festival of lights begins.
“Hannukah has always been about this miracle of light in the darkness,” Miller told Berman and Riedel. “I would have to say that most people this year feel like Hannukah is going to be, you know, an occasion, a small pause, to try and celebrate in what’s been a really terrible couple of months, I think the hardest months in Israel really since probably the war of independence, so I think it’s being interpreted as a light in the darkness of all this death and rape and loss and hostages and war.”
In returning to the grim reality, Miller described Israeli efforts to catch up with Yahwa Sinwar, the Hamas leader whose home is now besieged in the town of Khan Younis. “He’s hiding, certainly deep underground, but he is really, you know, he’s a dead man walking, according to the Israelis, and the first person on their most wanted list, and they openly say ‘our job is to kill him,’ so he’s being hunted down, but it’s estimated it will take several weeks for Israel to really dismantle or significantly damage Hamas’s assets and defeat the battalions that are there in Han Yunis. They’ve been waiting for this fight.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images