So long as we speak about different camps, and even about rival ones – including people who throw stones at, and are willing to harm, each other – it is still within the norm of our national existence.
Jews have always lived with controversies.
Psychologically and sociologically speaking – and this also has sound theological basis – Jews behave as a family.
And in a family siblings always fight with and beat each other, often until they actually bleed.
Does this mean that they cease to be siblings?
Not at all; such fights are part and parcel of the family entity.
Families are based on the great closeness among their members.
Because family members are so close to, as well as in such close proximity with, each other, they often fight.
Thus, differences of opinion do not remain a distant, theoretical matter, but rather lead to discord and even violence.
It even is a law of nature: all the world's creatures wage their fiercest wars against members of their own kind.
It is so with cats, wolves, even moose.
Is this an idyllic picture? Possibly not.
But even the prophet Isaiah, who promised that "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb" (11:6), never promised that two lambs will be able to coexist peacefully.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From an essay, "Achdut – Jewish Unity" by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz