Channukah ended on December 6th, so this post is a tad late.
Peter Paul and Mary recorded this song, Light One Candle, and it’s a beautiful and compelling Channukah song, full of appeal to those of us who embrace Progressive ideas.
The first two versus tell the truth:
“Light one candle for the Maccabee children
With thanks that their light didn’t die
Light one candle for the pain they endured
When their right to exist was denied…”
It’s still going on today. Progressives, who should know better, falsely believe that Israeli Jews (the descendants of the Maccabee children) do not have the right to their indigenous homeland. They are falsely accused of being Colonialists; of apartheid and even (most ridiculously) – genocide. This is a phenomenon known as the bandwagon fallacy. Bandwagon is a fallacy based on the assumption that the opinion of the majority is always valid: that is, everyone believes it, so you should too. It is also called an appeal to popularity, the authority of the many, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for “appeal to the people”). Argumentum ad populum proves only that a belief is popular, not that it’s true. The fallacy occurs, says Alex Michalos in Principles of Logic, when the appeal is offered in place of a convincing argument for the view in question. So in spite of history, in spite of the real data, progressives, even those who are members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) (who should know better because their faith demands that they embrace the truth) have drunk the kool aid.
One does have to hand it to the “Palestinians” (Interesting word, since their is no “P” in Arabic and the designation was made originally by the Romans, who occupied Judea and wished to eradicate the Jews forever, so they renamed the land) who have been successful in making their propaganda and selling it to even the most intelligent folks.
Sorry for the editorializing, but it bothers me when folks get everything else right, and this one thing wrong. It’s very sad.
