While the first and second books of Maccabees are the basis for the Hanukkah story, the rabbis excluded them from the Jewish canon. The first of these books is a Greek translation of a no-longer-extant Hebrew work; the second, according to its own preface, was composed in Greek and is an abridgment of an earlier work by a Jew living in what is now Libya. Examining the theological differences between the two, Daniel R. Schwartz argues that one represents the attitudes found in the newly independent kingdom of Judea, and the other those of the Diaspora:

According to numerous critics, many of whom have positions at prestigious think tanks and publications, the normalization agreements the Jewish state reached with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain constituted an abandonment of the Palestinians. Peter Berkowitz argues that, to the contrary, the Abraham Accords can help to improve the lot of the Palestinians, and to reduce the intensity of their conflict with Israel: