Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 21/12/2025
My Hanukkah hero this year is an unidentified woman in black. It was Wednesday evening, the fourth night of Hanukkah, at Tel Aviv's Weizmann City Mall. With a hijab on her head, a purse on one arm and a cellphone in her other hand, she approached the menorah and blew out the four candles in a single breath. Her male companion applauded.
Then the woman returned: The shamash candle (used to light
the other eight candles) was still burning; she extinguished it as well. This
woman is the Palestinian Rosa Parks. A video of her protest was posted on
social media over the weekend.
The incensed reactions were quick to follow: "Infuriating documentation" (Mako and Channel 14 News); "outrageous documentation" (the ultra-Orthodox news website Behadrei Haredim); "Arabic-speaking antisemite" ("The Shadow" [Yoav Eliasi] on Instagram).
Yair Foldes reported
in Haaretz that the police are investigating but have not yet decided on the
appropriate charge. They are considering Article 170 of Israel's Penal Law,
which prohibits "destroying, damaging or desecrating a place of worship or
any object held sacred by a group of persons with the intention of thereby
reviling their religion or with the knowledge that they are likely to consider
such destruction, damage or desecration as an insult to their religion."
The maximum penalty:
three years in prison. All those who have burned Qurans in West Bank mosques
are free, and this woman will be arrested.
As I write these
lines, the police manhunt is in full swing. By Saturday evening, Monday night
at the latest, the woman will be arrested. The show trial is on its way, even
if Channel 14 host Yinon Magal is pessimistic: "They will catch her,
photograph her next to the Israeli flag, bring her to a detention hearing and
the judge will release her to house arrest."
It's well known that
Israel's houses are filled with Arabs whom the courts have released. Ask the poet Dareen Tatour, who was under house arrest for
half a year (!) before her trial for a Facebook post, long before October 7,
2023. For right-wingers, the candle extinguisher is a terrorist who deserves
the death sentence.
It's not nice to blow
out Hanukkah candles; I have no idea what motivated the brave woman, but it's
hard to think of a more spectacular nonviolent act of protest.
It's permissible to
disrupt the holiday that Jews celebrate to commemorate the victory of the
Hasmonean revolt against the Greek occupier. On a holiday during which Jews
sing, "We come to banish darkness, in our hands are light and fire,"
it's permissible to protest. On a holiday in which Jews sing, "Let's have
a party \ We'll all dance the hora \ Gather 'round the table \ We'll give you a
treat \ dreidels to play with and latkes to eat," it's permissible to
spoil things. Above all, on a holiday where Jews sing without shame: "When
thou shalt have prepared a slaughter of the blaspheming foe" (the literal
translation of part of the first verse of "Maoz Tzur"/"Rock of
Ages") – it's permissible to rebel.
It's permissible for a
Palestinian Israeli to think that this celebration should be shut down with a
personal act of protest: blowing out the candles in a mall. While her
co-religionists and perhaps her relatives as well – in Jaffa, for example,
there isn't a single Arab family without family in Gaza – are drowning in mud,
freezing in the cold and hungry dogs continue to scavenge through the bodies of
their trapped relatives, the Jews here will not celebrate as if nothing has
happened.
Someone must remind
them that the war in Gaza isn't over and the suffering is only intensifying.
Someone must remind Israelis that while they stuff their faces with fancy
sufganiyot, in Gaza, there are still people who are starving, or at least sick
and tired of eating lentils.
There are hundreds of
thousands of homeless people there who are being ravaged by winter. There are patients there who are
dying slowly, in excruciating agony, for lack of medical care. And there are
hundreds of thousands of children there whose friends have been killed, and for
over two years they have had no school or any other framework to go to, and who
are doomed to a life of ignorance and despair even if they survive the war,
which is far from over.
This affects Israel's
Arabs. It pains them, even if they're paralyzed by fear of a regime that
arrests anyone who dares to express humanity. And now an unknown woman came, on
the fourth night of Hanukkah, and for one moment blew out the candles of the celebrating
Israelis, with one breath. She is a hero.
