It is Hanukkah. No one over here is in a festive mood, although the motif of expelling the darkness does land pretty well this year.

War resumes between Israel and Hamas, week nine. And we will talk to Ilana Dayan, one of Israel's most prominent journalists about the mood of the nation and much more.

It's unholy. I'm Unite Levy of Channel 12 in Tel Aviv.

And I'm Jonathan Friedland of The Guardian in London.

It's unholy to Jews on the news.

As you say, I can't think of a Hanukkah that has anything like the mood around the whole Jewish world that this one does.

It sort of crept up on us, I feel.

I mean, previously, you know, normally with a big festival coming, there's a buildup to it, there's excitement.

Instead, I found so many people going, really, this week, their minds, their hearts were elsewhere. They were preoccupied with

other things, gloomier things. So the darkness bit is certainly there. I'm heartened by you saying

you think there's light expelling the darkness, because right now we certainly got one of those

boxes ticked with the darkness. Obviously, we're certainly got one of those boxes ticked

with the darkness obviously there was some light in recent weeks with lot you know the week before

with those hostage releases but they did you know we since we record our last episode that all came to a

halt and the those rolling ceasefires came to a stop.

And since then, it's been back to full-throttle war and conflict,

particularly focused on the South and Ran Han Yunus.

And, you know, those hostage reunions, it feels like,

already quite a distant memory.

Yeah, I mean, you know, we're talking on Thursday, and it is two months to the day since

October 7th.

And we will talk a lot about the national mood with Ilana Dejana and our conversation,

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