During Chanukah, we add a special prayer to the Amidah. It is called Al Hanissim (For the miracles and the deliverance and the heroic actions and the rescues and the wars that you performed for our ancestors…).
It’s not hard to understand our desire to celebrate the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian Greeks some 2200 years ago. It was as desperate and unlikely struggle of a small group, without significant military training, taking on a far larger, far better trained and equipped military that had literally conquered the known world.
And, if you’ll forgive me, kicking their tuchus straight out of Israel.