Why has Israel never appeared in the Civ franchise?

[Solmyr]

Not really.  The Israelites themselves really had no influence.  As for late Judah, they had no influence concerning most of the things covered in the Civ series: tech development, road building, diplomacy, warfare, etc.

They should merge ancient and modern Israel then. I mean, their Germany is already an amalgamation of Teutonic barbarians (Furor Teutonicus), HRE (landsknechts), German Empire (Bismarck), and the Third Reich (panzers).

[Siege]

I actually think, now that emphasis has shifted away from having to have a gigantic empire, the Jews make sense as a Civ to include in the game.

OTOH, from a marketing standpoint including them as a playable Civ makes no sense if they want to be able to sell their product in the Middle East.

Is there actually a big market for Civ games in the Middle East?

Probably not, but think about it.... if they continue to not feature Israel in the game, any Arabs that buy Civ will continue to buy it and so will Jews since they're not totally insane and easily offended by anything and everything.  If they add Israel, Jews will continue to play it, but Arabs will boycott it (and possibly put out a fatwa on Sid Meier), so it seems like a poor business decision to me.

So, basicly we need to become neo-barbarians to get Israel included in the series...