I take back that slur about cluelessness. It was unwarranted. I will judge Mr. Wolf lkaf zchus that he lives far from Bet Shemesh and is unaware of the realities in the area, perhaps even in Eretz Yisroel in general.

Let us take this s a rule of thumb; When you see other Jews – especially a group – accused of some aberrant behavior, ask yourself “would I believe this about people in my shul? No. So I won’t believe this about them either. There must be more to the story”

I’ll give an example; AN avreich yelled at a female soldier who was sitting among them men as a planned protest. Ok.

He was arrested. So far this is what everyone has heard.

What people may not have heard is that the police wanted to release him, and not arrest him, because he did no crime – yelling at someone is not something you are arrested for. However that soldier is a bigshot in the army and is trying to force the issue. That’s how she got him arrested.

I don’t know how it will end, but please do use your brains and good judgement; there is more than meets the eye…

I have two answers;

One is the Ri M’Luniel in Shabbos who says that we have eight days in order to show that it is more important than any other Yomtov, so we have it as long as the longest Yomtov – Sukkos + Shmini Atzeres, which is eight days. Look inside to see why Chanuka is more important than any other YomTov!

My own answer is that if we want to commemorate the highest person in the world who is – lets say – ten feet tall. Would we make a four foot statue for him because everyone else is six feet and only four feet of his height is remarkable?? So too, the oil burnt eight days instead of one. So we commemorate the eight-day miracle with eight days, no?