A brief history of empires the Jews have outlived in Israel

Here is a brief history of the great empires the Jews have seen off and why Israel's Islamist enemies today are destined to join them in historical ignominy.

The list of empires that the Jews have outlived to be back in their homeland of Israel reads like a Who’s Who of history’s greatest empires. Israel’s current Islamist foes are destined to join this ill-fated list.

Pharaonic Egypt was the first empire the Israelites saw off with their exodus from slavery, as told in the Torah, or in the Old Testament. Scholars may dispute the historicity of the Exodus story, but there is no question the Jews have outlasted the ancient Egyptians.

Having been in Israel since the Israelite conquest of Canaan around 1200 BCE, as told in the Book of Joshua, the Jews are indigenous, though if there are any Canaanites reading this, feel free to stake your claim.

Archaeological evidence supports this timeline with the caveat that Hebrew settlement was a gradual affair, rather than a single event. This coincided with the region’s transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age.

From 1050-586 BCE, the Israelites had a united monarchy under famous kings such as King Saul and King David. After King Solomon’s death around 930 BCE, the kingdom split into the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.

When Zionists recreated the Jewish state, it was no sure thing that it would be called Israel, and not Judah or Judea (which is the Hellenized form). They went with Israel because at the time of independence, Israel did not yet control the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria.

The Kingdom of Israel lasted for about 200 years, while the Kingdom of Judah lasted about 350 years.

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The dates below refer to the periods these empires occupied Israel, not necessarily when those empires rose and fell overall.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire (circa 740-605 BCE) expanded out of what is now northern Iraq to become the region’s dominant power. It expanded westward and turned the Kingdom of Israel into a vassal state that had to pay tribute to avoid being sacked.

After an Israelite rebellion around 722 BCE under Emperor Sargon II, the Neo-Assyrians conquered northern Israel, expelling the Israelites and dispersing the Ten Lost Tribes.

The Kingdom of Judah continued as a Neo-Assyrian vassal state, paying heavy tribute.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire (circa 605BCE-539 BCE) rose to prominence under Nebuchadnezzar II and at the Neo-Assyrian Empire’s expense.

Judah became a Babylonian vassal state, but the Judeans kept revolting until, in 586 BCE, after a rebellion by Judean King Zedekiah, the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed the city, including the First Temple. Many Jews were deported, and so began the Babylonian Exile.

The Persian (Achaemenid) Empire (circa 539-332 BCE) under King Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 539 BCE and proved to be more lenient towards its subjects.

Cyrus allowed exiled Jews to return to Judah and to rebuild their temple, marking the beginning of the Second Temple period around 516 BCE. Judah became a semi-autonomous province of the Persian Empire. The Jewish community flourished in this period.

It is worth noting that Jews and Persians have maintained positive people-to-people relations. It was only after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 when crazed mullahs took over the organs of the Iranian state that Iran and Israel became enemies.

When Iran’s sadistic and unpopular clerical regime falls, as it surely will, there is no reason to think Iranian-Israeli relations cannot thrive again.

The Hellenistic Kingdoms’ (circa 332–63 BCE) ruling of Judah began when Alexander the Great of Macedon improbably defeated the Persians in 332 BCE.

Alexander’s empire was divided up among his generals after his death with Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucid Empire (based in what is now Syria) battling for regional dominance.

Judah fell under Ptolemaic rule until 198 BCE when the Seleucids took control.

Tensions rose under the Seleucids when Antiochus IV Epiphanes tried to impose Greek religious practices on the Jews, which sparked the Maccabean Revolt in 167 BCE.

The Jews won this war and repaired the Second Temple, which the Greeks had tried to destroy. This is what the Jewish festival Hannukah celebrates, and is why every second Jewish sporting club or team has Maccabee in its name.

The Hasmonean Kingdom (140-63 BCE) marked a Jewish return to rule in their land for the first time since the Babylonian exile. Although this kingdom expanded, internal conflicts weakened it, paving the way for the next great empire to waltz through.

The Roman Empire (63 BCE - 324 CE) invaded in 63 BCE and turned Judah into a Roman client state. This was when Herod the Great expanded the Second Temple and undertook huge building projects, many of which still stand today.

For a few shekels, a tourist to Jerusalem can visit the Roman Theater and note that the Jews are still here and the Romans are not.

As Roman rule became more dominant, so did their interference in Jewish religious affairs, which led to growing unrest. This culminated in the Great Jewish Revolt against Roman rule from 66-73 CE. The Roman General Titus destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE. So began an era of Roman dominance and Jewish exile.

The Romans even renamed it Syria Palestina after the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 to wipe out its Jewish heritage. This is the origin of the term Palestine. Today’s so-called Palestinians use the name for exactly the same purpose, which is to pretend it is not Jewish land.

The Byzantine Empire (324-628) was the continuation of the eastern portion of the Roman Empire, which collapsed in the late 4th Century. Its capital was Constantinople (TRUE STORY: Once when I was on a flight across Europe the pilot announced “we are now flying over Constantinople, which the rest of the world calls Istanbul” and all the Greeks on the plane booed and jeered.)

It was a Christian empire and Judah became an important pilgrimage destination. The Byzantines restricted Jewish religious practices and occasionally persecuted Jewish communities.

The Early Islamic Caliphates (638-1099) marked the beginning of Islamic colonization when the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the region.

Jerusalem surrendered peacefully to Caliph Umar, who ensured religious freedom for Jews and Christians. The region subsequently became part of the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), and later the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258).

Jews did better than under the Byzantines and were granted the status of dhimmi (protected non-Muslim). While this gave them religious freedom, they still had to pay a special tax, making it a Goodfellas-like protection racket.

The Fatimid Caliphate (969-1099), based out of Egypt, marked an era of Shia Islamic rule.

This Caliphate was less tolerant of other religions, and Caliph al-Hakim destroyed or damaged many Christian and Jewish holy sites, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where you can you see Christian pilgrims passing out in religious delirium today.

The Crusader Kingdoms (1099-1291) retook the Holy Land for Christendom and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Jews and Muslims were persecuted during the first part of this period, though freedom of religion was later tolerated.

The Crusaders ruled for two centuries but had to fight off frequent Muslim revolts. Driving these revolts was the Islamic belief that once a place has been under Islamic rule, it must forever be so. This same thinking drives the Islamist desire to destroy Israel and retake the parts of Spain and Portugal that the Moors once held.

The Ayyubid Dynasty and Mamluk Sultanate (1187-1517), the latter of which came from Egypt, marked a return to Muslim control when General Saladin defeated the Crusaders and recaptured Jerusalem in 1187. Several more battles were fought before the Crusaders were expelled fully by 1291.

Jerusalem became a provincial backwater. Jewish communities continued to live in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and elsewhere, and were permitted as long as they remained quiet.

The Ottoman Empire (1517-1917), under Sultan Selim I, conquered the region from the Mamluks and ruled for the next 400 years, during which the Ottomans also neglected Palestine.

The Ottomans did allow religious freedom and Jewish communities grew, especially in places such as Hebron and Safed. This was when Kabbalistic mysticism emerged in the 16th Century. Christian communities continued to live in Palestine, too.

It was under Ottoman rule that early Zionist pioneers began moving to Palestine.

The British Mandate (1917-1948) began after the First World War, during which British forces under General Edmund Allenby captured Jerusalem in 1917 and brought Ottoman rule to an end.

The League of Nations granted Britain a mandate to govern Palestine until it was ready to self-govern as a Jewish homeland, though Transjordan (now Jordan) was carved out in 1921, and a further partition was voted for by the United Nations in 1947, but which the Arabs rejected.

Civil war broke out in 1947-1948 between Jewish and Arab militias. The Jews won the civil war and declared independence in 1948. Five Arab states immediately declared war on Israel. Israel won this war - its War of Independence - and the Jews have been fighting various Arab attempts to destroy Israel ever since.

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While this is a history of imperial conquest in Israel, the Jews have seen off two other powerful and evil ideologies - Nazism and Communism.

The National Socialists (1933-1945) came to power in Germany and marked the beginning of what Adolf Hitler boasted would be a Thousand Year Reich. There is something about millenarianism that dictators just cannot resist.

Obsessed with insane ideas about Aryan blood purity, the Nazis tried to take over all of Europe and unleashed the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were exterminated on an industrial scale in camps across Eastern Europe.

The Nazis had their eyes on the Middle East, too. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, who spewed Quran-justified antisemitism, allied with the Nazis and sought Hitler’s help in getting rid of the Jews of the Middle East once the Nazis had gained control.

The reason modern Palestinian rhetoric so closely mirrors Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda is because it is precisely that.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1917-1991) never got control of Israel but the Jewish state and the wider Middle East became a fierce Cold War battleground.

Israel was founded on socialist kibbutzim ideas so it was not sure that it would fall into the West’s sphere of influence. However, once it became clear that it had, the Soviet Union deployed one of its favorite tricks, which was to create liberation movements.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s charter was drafted in Moscow in 1964. Other movements the Soviets created were the National Liberation Movement of Bolivia in 1964, and the National Liberation Movement of Colombia in 1965.

This is the point at which the Arabs began reframing defeating Israel as a Palestinian nationalist struggle, even though there had never been a Palestinian nation to liberate.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but its propaganda lives on. Most of the world still buys into this entirely fictional narrative today because they have heard it so often and cannot find history books in the library because they found the Dewy Decimal System too hard to learn.

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I take two lessons from this remarkable history.

I take no comfort from the way borders have changed so many times. I am also old enough to have learned geography at school when all the countries of Eastern Europe were part of the Soviet Union. Borders change, so it is naive to think the world map will look the same in a hundred years. Israel can never be complacent.

However, I also draw comfort and pride from the Jewish people’s remarkable tenacity not just to survive, but to strive. After all this, they have built a first world liberal democratic state in their ancestral homeland.

This gives me confidence that Israel and the Jewish people will defeat their enemies today, which are Islamists and the antisemitic Far Left.

The Caliphate-seeking lunatics who want to destroy Israel, bring down Muslim Kingdoms, and defeat the West, will fail in the face of an unstoppable modernity that even Arab Muslim states are embracing.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is deeply unpopular and only sadistic violence keeps its clerical regime in power. Now that Israel has smashed Iran’s powerful proxies of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and wiped out Iran’s air defenses, the Islamic regime’s days, months, or years, are numbered.

The Far-Left crazies who want to remake the capitalist West, despite socialism being history’s worst form of government, will ultimately collapse on themselves in an orgy of infighting because they always do.

The bizarre Red-Green alliance between the Far Left and the Islamists is so full of contradictions that a reckoning is inevitable. That will likely involve the Islamists turning on the Woke, who will understand the gravity of their mistake only when it is too late.

We are in turbulent times in the Middle East, so it is business as usual. That means, like for the past three millennia, the Jews will be there.

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