Our indigenous rights

Regarding “An ignorant ‘New York Times” trashes the Maccabees” (December 4), the contemporary message of Hanukkah is this.

We who are active in countering false claims against Israel, are accustomed to hearing blatant lies about our country being an “apartheid state, committing genocide, occupying someone else’s land, etc.,” but think about this. If Hanukkah represents anything, it is the message of how we Jews fought off Greece, an ancient European colonial power, because we were (and are) the indigenous people in our own land. Remember that whenever you hear someone claim that we are “colonizing occupiers.” If you want to see real apartheid, how about the insistence of the Palestinian leadership that no Jew can be a Palestinian in a State of Palestine? That is genuine racist apartheid. BARRY SHAW Netanya.