I have heard talk of civil war in Israel before, but ever since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government came to power, that talk has become a lot louder and a lot more frequent. It seems that not a day goes by that there isn't mention in the Israeli press of the possibility of civil war in Israel.
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It goes without saying that Israel's enemies would love to see a civil war. What better time to launch a campaign to destroy the Jewish state. In fact, if you know your Jewish history, you probably know that Jewish independence was repeatedly crushed whenever the Jewish people fought each other. You probably also know that the best periods in Jewish history came to pass when the Jewish people were united.
Indeed, the golden age of the Jewish people took place when the Kingdom of Israel was united under the rule of King David and subsequently by his son, King Solomon. The Israelites overcame the threats posed by other peoples in the region, such as the Philistines. At its height, the Kingdom of Israel stretched from the Sinai Peninsula to the Euphrates River in present-day Syria.
But after the days of David and Solomon, the Jewish people became divided. The Kingdom of Israel split between the ten northern tribes and the two southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin, the latter of which are the ancestors of most of today's modern-day Jews. The Assyrian Empire eventually conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and exiled its ten tribes. It also subsequently reduced the kingdom of Judah to a feeble tributary state. Not too long afterward, the Babylonian Empire conquered Judah and destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem.
The last Jewish state to exist in the Land of Israel before today's State of Israel was the Hellenized Hasmonean Jewish kingdom that lasted from around 165 BCE to 63 BCE. This kingdom emerged following the successful revolt led by the Maccabees, who drove out the Syrian Greeks of the Seleucid Empire and reconsecrated the Temple – an event that we now celebrate every year during Hanukkah. The term Hasmonean comes from the name Hasmoneus, the Greek name for the Maccabees.
Over the next few decades, the Hasmonean Jewish kingdom expanded its territory. At its height, the kingdom controlled most of the Land of Israel, aside from the Negev. It also controlled some territory east of the Jordan River, in the present-day Golan Heights and Jordan.
But in the 60s BCE, a civil war erupted, pitting two Hasmonean brothers, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, and their supporters, against each other. In the midst of this Jewish civil war, the Roman Empire intervened. In 63 BCE, the Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem and Jewish independence came to an end once again. It would not be restored for another two thousand years, when Jewish people from around the world united to create the State of Israel.
Retaining that unity, we not only managed to keep our independence in spite of overwhelming opposition, but we also regained control of the heartland of the Land of Israel for the first time in two thousand years when we reunited Jerusalem and took back the territory of Judea and Samaria during the 1967 war.
Our history should teach us that the fortunes of the Jewish people are good when we are united and bad when we are not. Thus, we cannot and must not even entertain the idea of a civil war in Israel. Our current struggles over judicial reform and other crucial issues can all be resolved through negotiation and compromise – two things that are needed for a democratic country like Israel to function.
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