Chanukah

In ‘Al hanissim’ we thank Hashem for delivering “The strong in the hand of the weak, the many in the hands of the few, the impure in the hands of the pure, the wicked in the hands of the righteous…” The meforshim ask, the miracle of strong and many in the hands of the few and weak is a miracle worth mentioning, but what is the big deal if the victors happened to have been pure and righteous - that doesn’t make the miracle any bigger, so why mention it in the tefilah?

The miracle of Chanukah was twofold, one, Klal Yisroel defeated the mighty Greek empire. “The many in the hands of the few, strong in the hands of the weak…” The second miracle was that the oil that was enough to last one day lasted for eight. Yet we only commemorate the miracle of the oil and not our victory at war.
There are two different types of miracle, one is that we do some kind of hishtadlus- effort however small and Hashem ‘helps us’. Then there is a miracle where we just sit back and leave it up to Hashem to take care of us and our needs. Chanukah has both aspects. The Chashmonaim went out battle physically- even though they were heavily outnumbered they did what they were able and Hashem helped them out. (As opposed to Purim when all Klal Yisroel did was daven.) The miracle of the oil on the other hand was purely by Hashem from start to end.
The Chachomim of the time foresaw that if they institute a commemoration for the miracle, later generations would come and make the mistake and celebrate the unlikely victory and forget what it stood for and that it was all from Hashem. (As can be seen in modern day Israel every sports team is named Macabee.) Instead they gave us the miracle of the oil lasting for eight days as a miracle to celebrate and commemorate. A miracle that we will never be able to take credit, and all generations will thank Hashem.

Maybe we can suggest that is why we mention that the victors of Chanukah were pure and righteous, to remind us in later generations that the war wasn’t fought for our own political benefits and wasn’t won through our involvement. Only we fought for Hashems greatness and only because of him did we defeat the mighty and impure Greeks.