Israeli police sappers have constructed a unique Chanukah menorah from pieces of rockets fired into Israel by Hezbollah over the last year. The menorah will be lit across northern Israel throughout the holiday week, including by bereaved family members in the cities and towns where fatal attacks occurred.
The symbolic project, dubbed “Lighting up the North,” was carried out by two police sappers who defused thousands of rockets, missiles and drones directed at Israel by the Lebanese terror organization. Hezbollah began the attacks one day after the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and continued firing on Israeli towns and cities until last month’s ceasefire took effect. Hezbollah launched approximately 17,000 projectiles on Israel during the war.
“We are marking the holiday of light without forgetting the darkness that preceded it,” Police sapper Yossi Hod told JNS on Monday.
Hod, together with a colleague, constructed the unique Chanukah menorah in just two days earlier this month. Chanukah begins on the evening of Dec. 25.
Planned even before the Nov. 27 ceasefire took effect, the veteran sappers made the menorah from pieces of rockets that they had gathered over the year-long war, including from the attack on the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights that killed 12 children, the attack on the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona that killed a couple and their three dogs, and the one on the northern Israeli town of Shfaram that killed a teacher.
The sappers decided not to varnish any of the original pieces used in the construction of the special nine-branched candelabrum, leaving it looking tarred and blackened in parts.
“We decided not to touch up the items at all and so the result doesn’t seem symmetrical, but it is very authentic,” said Hod.
The 48-year-old sapper, who spent the last quarter century on the force, said that this is the first time he has ever taken part in such a project.
“I looked at this project not just as a police sapper, but as a believing Jew who feels that this holiday could not have come at a better time for the nation of Israel,” he said, “and it shows our strength and power as a nation for good.”
“Nothing embodies our nation’s resilience more powerfully than our ability to turn darkness into light even in the midst of a war declared upon us,” said Israel Police spokesman Dean Elsdunne. “At this moment, we are literally transforming something evil into holiness.”
