Among the definitions of the enemy state as Israeli, Jewish or Zionist, a former Jordanian Foreign Minister stands in the maze of answering the question, hesitating between terms he knows the sensitivity and political danger of, eventually ending up with an ambiguous description that Israel is moving toward religiosity, as if the core of the problem lies in internal societal transformations rather than in the nature of the project it was founded on.
Then the minister adds that the Zionist project has ended because it can no longer offer anything to the enemy state, a statement that seems decisive on the surface but reflects a superficial reading of the nature of Zionism, which is a colonialist, expansionist idea that continuously redefines itself through power, religion, and myth.
Reducing Zionism to just its political or economic dimension overlooks its deeper reality as a complex ideological system comprising religion, history, myth, and power, and the transformation of religious text into a sovereign instrument, and fear into a legitimate creed for its existence.
Israel is not experiencing a crisis of religiosity but is living through structural extremism where religion merges with nationalism and militarization to redefine the state as a permanent fortress in a state of engagement with its surroundings.
From here, the real danger does not lie in the claim that Israel is becoming more religious but in the incapability to understand that this religiosity is the purest expression of Zionism itself and not its antithesis.
Zionism has not ended but has returned to its original essence when it failed to present itself as a normal state and resorted to invoking the sacred text and theological narrative to justify occupation and exclusion.
We are in dire need of ministers who possess a deep understanding of the enemy state, ministers who know the history of Israel as it formed in its self-awareness, and who comprehend its religious thought in its contradictions and grasp Zionism as a philosophy of existence and not just a political movement
Diplomacy with an ideological enemy is not understood through impressions and quick judgments but with a philosophical mind that recognizes that this entity does not live on the logic of a modern state but on the logic of an armed myth, and any political dealings with it without dismantling its thought and philosophy is merely superficial interaction
The most dangerous thing a nation can face is a misunderstanding of the enemy, because those who do not understand their enemy are incapable of confronting them and fall prisoners to the enemy’s language and descriptions, for the conflict is not confined to a specific political stage but spans a long and open existential confrontation that does not allow simplification in improvised descriptions.
