The first and second books of Maccabees—on which the Hanukkah story is based—are not part of the Hebrew Bible, but they are included in Catholic and other Christian Scriptures. The books also inspired two Italian-made films, the 1911 I Maccabei and the 1962 Il Vecchio Testamento. Considering the latter, whose name curiously means “The Old Testament,” and which was intended for Italian, French, and American audiences, Matt Page writes:

The first book of Maccabees tells the story of Mattathias and his five sons John, Simon, Judas [i.e., Judah], Eleazar, and Jonathan, but the second zooms in to focus on the life of Judas. . . . [The director Gianfranco] Parolini’s version of the story, however, chooses a different path. Instead of making Judas the main hero, it opts for his brother Simon. . . . Judas is [portrayed] as something of an extremist, a man of violence. . . . It may be that . . . the filmmakers decided they needed a violent rebel to contrast with their more peaceable hero, but it’s also possible they worried that Christian-majority audiences in both Italy and America might not accept a hero named Judas. . . .

Whereas Judas had already been fighting the Syrian-Greeks [by the time the film’s action starts, his brother] Simon has been becoming friends with them. We first meet him dressed in Greek-style dress socializing with his soon-to-be wife Diotima and his best friend Antenone. As the conflict between the Syrians and the Jews intensifies, the dynamics between these three become more interesting. All three represent the more peaceable, moderate side of their people and are angered when their own countrymen inflict suffering on their friends. Early on in the film, Simon is shot by an arrow and Antenone nurses him to recover.

Later on, Antenone is executed by Jewish forces much to Simon’s dismay, [while] his spirit is shown to rise up in bodily form. This not only reflects the theological development we find in 2Maccabees of belief in some kind of afterlife, but also hands it to Antenone, a peaceable Gentile, rather than to the Jewish Mattathias, Judas, or Jonathan. While the absence of a resurrection for any of the Jewish heroes was not necessarily intended as a slight, certainly it reaffirms the film’s attempts to idealize a more compromising, peaceable approach over a specific religious conviction.

Alternatively the point could be made that [the film] attempts to de-Judaize these quintessentially Jewish heroes in order to portray their story as part of the journey toward a more “superior,” “tolerant,” Americanized Christianity. Of Mattathias and his five sons, it is the one who is least Jewish and most in tune with the dominant cultural empire who is promoted to become the hero, and it is a non-Jew who is resurrected and later portrayed as something of a Christ figure in the film’s closing moments.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.