Sa’ar Ganor stood on the highest stone block of the ruined fortress and smiled. Six years ago, he had stood there, when it was the only exposed part of the 2,200 year-old structure, and surmised what was beneath. As the district archaeologist for the Israeli Antiquities Authority, he had led the survey which had pinpointed the locations of a chain of Seleucid fortresses. This week, the excavations of the first one, near the village of Lachish, was finally complete. The site will soon be opened to the public.

Standing atop the fortress, you can easily see why it was built there. It commands a view of the ancient road, still in use, leading from the Hebron Hills to the ancient ports on Israel’s southern coast. Just a couple of miles to the south stood the Edomite city of Maresha. This week, as the Antiquities Authority presented their new find to journalists, the breathless press statement spoke of how “the stories of the Maccabees are coming to life before our eyes”. This wasn’t just a stretch of imagination, it was also a stretch of history.

The fortress was indeed captured in 122BCE by the soldiers of Yochanan Horkanus, or John Hyrcanus, grandson of Matityahu the Hasmonean, who raised the banner of the Maccabean rebellion against the Hellenising Seleucid occupiers. But those events that we commemorate to this day as the story of Hannukah occurred about 50 years before the Hasmonean kingdom, by then riven with fraternal intrigue, expanded southwards from its capital in Jerusalem to finish off the last remnants of the Seleucid Empire in the land.

When I put this to Mr Ganor, he smiled wryly. He’s an archaeologist but also a civil servant, so he’s won’t comment on how politicians choose to frame his findings. Instead, he showed me traces of a great fire that ravaged the fortress.

“We found weapons and catapult stones in the ruins, but no bodies,” he said. “The Seleucid defenders must have fled to Maresha and then Yochanan Horkanus’s men just destroyed the place. They could have kept it for their use but they seemed to be intent on a scorched-earth policy.”

The main accounts of the war against the Seleucids come from the great Jewish historian Josephus in his books, two centuries later. He wrote that the Edomites of Maresha were converted to Judaism by the conquering Hasmoneans, but the way the fortress was burnt to the ground, in a similar fashion to some buildings in Maresha (which was excavated in 1900 by a British archaeological expedition) suggest that may have not been so many left to convert. Fifty years later, the Edomites would make a comeback when Antipater, and then his son Herod, were appointed as rulers of Judea by the Roman empire, effectively ending the Hasmonean dynasty and Jewish sovereignty in the land for the next 2000 years.

Ancient and modern

The less attractive sides of Hasmonean history are usually overshadowed by the Maccabean narrative of Hanukkah. One person who takes Hasmonean history seriously is Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His father, Professor Benzion Netanyahu, specialised in the history of the Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, but he had a side-passion for the Hasmonean era, and was particularly focused on the diplomatic mistakes of the Hasmonean kings who allied themselves with Rome. It is a criticism he inculcated in his son from childhood, when he would do homework with the young Bibi, directing him to write long essays on the subject.

A fear of today’s sovereign Jewish state being beholden to another empire has infused Mr Netanyahu’s policies and rhetoric to this day. Now, as a frustrated leader of the opposition, one of his main criticisms of the new government is that it agreed on a “no surprises” policy with the Biden Administration, which Mr Netanyahu claims means that Israel will not act against Iran without prior approval from the Americans. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett strenuously denies this; but it’s a powerful narrative nonetheless.

Rob Malley, the Biden Administration’s special envoy on Iran, was in Israel this week to discuss efforts to relaunch negotiations with Tehran on the nuclear agreement signed by Barack Obama back in 2015, and from which Donald Trump withdrew in 2018. There is near-consensus now within the Israeli security establishment that while the Iran deal was far from perfect, once it was in place, it was a mistake for the United States to withdraw from it. As a result, an unregulated Iran is now closer than ever to reaching nuclear weapon capability. But while that view is regularly heard in off-record conversations, in public Mr Bennett is still too afraid of his predecessor’s opprobrium to make the same case. Instead, he has reached the rather vague formula that “there’s no point in going back to the nuclear agreement now, since Iran is at a very different point”.

To underline this position, he let it be known that he would not be meeting with Mr Malley this week, as he disagrees with his intentions of returning to the Iran deal. It made little difference, as the envoy met with both Defence Minister Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, for what were by all accounts very cordial meetings. The Israelis were pleasantly surprised that Mr Malley, who has been portrayed as a rather quixotic figure, was clear-eyed about the rather bleak prospect of getting the Iranians to agree to something the Americans, let alone the Israelis, can live with. Here is yet another example of how Mr Bennett is still finding it difficult to emerge from his old boss’s shadow.

Off the shelf

In Jewish bookshops in London catering to the strictly Orthodox communities, there’s not that much variety in the children’s book sections. One name dominates the offerings of titles deemed appropriate for the pure-minded. At least it dominated until this week. For many Charedi children, a new Chaim Walder book was going to be an eagerly anticipated Chanukah present.

For the past 25 years, Mr Walder has been the leading children’s author in the Charedi community, not just in Israel but in Britain and the US as well, where his books are published by Feldheim in English. What makes the books (the most popular of which are the “children talk about themselves” series) is that they contain easily identifiable characters for strictly Orthodox children, speaking about their everyday problems and challenges in a way which is compelling, yet also completely in line with Haredi ideology.

This may sound straightforward to anyone brought up on Enid Blyton, but it’s an incredible achievement in a closed society where even children’s books must be approved by rabbis.

His bestselling children’s books and their rabbinical approval made Mr Walder a superstar of the Charedi community and one of its most eloquent representatives, writing for adults as well and even a weekly column in the doctrinaire Yated Ne’eman newspaper.

Until last Friday when an investigative piece in Ha’aretz reported allegations against him of sexual harassment of women and girls. Mr Walder vehemently denies the allegations. At first, Charedi journalists circled the wagons around their influential colleague but as the allegations persisted on social media, with hints of more to come, his books began to be removed from shops everywhere from Brooklyn to Jerusalem.

He was suspended from a gig on a Charedi radio station and now everyone is waiting to see whether his Friday column will be appearing as usual.

This is the most troubling in a series of exposes against prominent Charedi figures. Rabbi Elazar Berland who was convicted of sexual assault (and is now alleged to be behind two cases of murder) was the leader of a relatively secluded Chassidic cult. Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, founder of the ZAKA emergency service, was seen by many as a figure who had already crossed over to the secular Israeli world.

Mr Walder however is not just a cultural star of the community, he has been treated for years now as an authority on educational matters, and seen as someone acting on behalf of the senior rabbis of the strictest “Lithuanian” stream. Whether or not he will be allowed to continue writing, this case will have major implications within the community.