Qassem S. Qassem*
According to the Israeli omens in the “Tanakh,” the Old Testament, the collapses within the “Kingdom of Israel” involves internal reasons, as disagreements erupt among the “tribes of Israel” and that in the end, God will do what He previously did: “tore the kingdom of Solomon to tatters”. These prophecies are evident in the Israeli discourse today, as the Zionist entity enters its eighth decade and as the internal divisions emerge clear on the political level.
The majority of Israeli leaders believe in the eight-decade curse. According to Israeli chronicles, the majority of the Israelites’ Kingdoms of the Prophet Solomon collapsed during the eighth decade.
“Throughout Jewish history, the Jews did not have a state for more than 80 years except during two periods: the reign of King David and the Hasmonean period. Both periods signaled the beginning of its collapse in the eighth decade. Lessons must be derived from the dispersion and division that plagued the former Jewish kingdoms, which began to fade on the verge of the eighth century.”
The aforementioned remarks are not issued by a Jewish rabbi or even by a religious person, but rather by Ehud Barak, Israel’s former prime minister and the soldier holding the highest number of awards in the entity’s history.
In an essay published by the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, Barak, the left-wing Zionist, expresses his concern about the internal divisions in Israeli society, the hostility between the right and the left, the religious and the secular people, and the religious Zionist and the religious Jewish.
This feeling is conveyed by most Israeli politicians, both right and left, and was expressed by the entity’s former president, Reuven Rivlin, at the Herzliya Conference in 2017. Back then, he stated that the division in the Israeli society based on identity and drives divided Israeli society into what he called four tribes: 38% are secular Jews, 15% are Zionist Jews, 25% are Arabs, and 25% are Ultra-Orthodox Fundamentalists, who are not Zionists.
This Israeli reality compels the entity’s leaders to tackle “hard questions”, as Rivlin expressed. “Can we Zionists accept this reality? Can we accept the reality that half of Israel’s population (Arabs and fundamentalist Jews) do not identify themselves as Zionists and do not sing the national anthem Hatikvah? (Hope)”.
The state of political deadlock that Israeli society has witnessed over the last four years best explains such divisions. The “tribes” in the Zionist entity opted to assemble in the former government of Naftali Bennett, whose administration has proven that the societal divisions in ‘Israel’ are mirrored in its poor performance. Even the most ridiculous issues, such as yeast, could undermine the coalition: The Israeli Government’s Leader of the Coalition Idit Silman resigned last April as a result of yeast bread being delivered to public hospitals during the Jewish Passover.
The curse of the eighth decade, which led to the division of David and Solomon’s kingdom and the collapse of the Hasmonean kingdom, according to the Jewish tale, haunts all the Israeli enemy leaders. Barak and Rivlin preceded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said in a statement cited by Haaretz newspaper in 2017 that ‘Israel’ must prepare to confront an existential threat from now on in order to commemorate the centennial of its establishment.
“The Jewish dynasty of Hasmoneans, which ruled Canaan for around 140 years, did not reach more than 80 years,” Netanyahu added.
The enemy leaders and intellectuals are preoccupied with ensuring the entity’s success in conquering the curse of the eighth decade. As a result, every Israeli prime minister is keen to avoid civil war during his reign and to avoid internal collapse, as happened with earlier Jewish kingdoms, out of fear of that destiny. This is what Bennett expressed in statements last year: “We must focus on not collapsing from within; because the most severe issue facing Israel is the risk of internal disintegration, and thus extinction, as happened with the prior kingdoms of the Jews.”
*Qassem S. Qassem is a Palestinian author who wrote this artcile for Al-Akhbar Daily on February 4, 2023. Al-Manar English Website’s Areej Fatima Al-Husseini translated the article.
Source: Al-Akhbar newspaper (translated and edited by Al-Manar English Website)
