Rating: 
Summary: To understand the soul of Israel
Review: This review is dedicated to all the sons and daughters of Israel who have fell in defence of that remarkable land.
This wonderful book is essential for any Jew who wants to learn about his or her roots, any Christian who wants to learn more about the Judaic roots of his or her faith, and anyone else who wants to learn about the soul of the Jewish people.]
This is the story of the Maccabees- 5 glorious brothers who lead the rebellion by the Jewish people of Judea, against the cruel tyranny of that land's Greek and Syrian occupiers.
It is particularly relevant today, when the Jewish State is fighting for its life against cruel and ungodly forces that have decided that the Jewish people are no longer entitled to their homeland, and that Israel must disappear.
"We where slave in Egypt - and we will never forget that we where slaves in Egypt. So it must have been then, in the long ago, when our people, twelve tribes of them, sick with wandering and longing for rest, came out of the desert and saw the wooded hills and fertile valleys of Palestine'.
Once more the Jews have returned from their homeland, this time after two thousand years of persecution, and soon the lion will be awaken in the souls of the Jewish people to protect their land, from those who would kill their children and take it way, as the Maccabees did so with the Greek and Syrian invaders.
We read how a pretty eight year old girl, Deborah, the daughter of the schoolmaster Lebel is brutally murdered on the orders of the Greek warden of Judea, Apelles, and we are reminded of the slaughter of Jewish children by Arab terrorists, who much of the world, today support. It is these many incidents of cruelty and the desecration of the Jewish peoples' holy places that leads the peace loving people of Judea to become fierce warriors who's message to the world is: "We have extracted the price of freedom, which is always counted in blood, even as Moses did, and Joshua and Gideon too. From here on, we will not ask forgiveness, only for strength, for strength."In a chillingly familiar parallel the attitude of those who support Palestinian terror,we read of the edict by the Greek King Antiochus, that to kill a Jew is no longer a crime but a virtue". We learn how the peaceful Hebrew people, a people who ask nothing more than to determine their own future, in their own homeland, are forced to become warlike and to avenge the blood of its children: "They will pay -for every lick of flame, for every drop of blood, for every hurt."
There is always a message of hope: 'Simon a free people cannot be conquered - for us it is always the beginning, always the beginning."
It is this hope enshrined in the depiction of the beauty of the land of Israel, the only homeland of the Jewish people, and the beauty of it's children living in peace:
"Never was Israel like this before in all it's time, for the children played without fear, laughing as they ran through the grass, and splashed in streams. On the hillsides, the white lambs bleated for their mothers, and between the rocks pink and white flowers grew. Nowhere was there a break in the terraces; layer upon layer, they climbed the slopes, and the crop was a good thing to see, so rich and verdant. Who could see such things and deny that this was the land of milk and honey, blessed and thrice blessed".
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