The Desert Superpowers of Illusion
The strangest fact of modern politics is that the two most powerful small states on earth are not measured by their armies or their economies but by their scriptures. Israel and Saudi Arabia, neither of them global in size, both of them dependent on others for survival, have become superpowers of a kind no empire of the past ever managed to be. Their strength does not lie in nuclear weapons or industrial output, but in theological leverage. They are not modern states so much as metaphysical empires, commanding the allegiance of billions not by law but by revelation.
Israel’s survival has always depended on Western loyalty, but that loyalty is not merely strategic. It is biblical. The United States and Europe treat Israel as more than an ally; they treat it as the fulfillment of a sacred narrative. Jesus was Jewish, the New Testament presupposes the Old, and the Holy Land is the ground upon which the Western imagination has built its own salvation story. Thus, Israel is armed, financed, and shielded from criticism not only because of its geopolitical position, but because it inhabits the West’s scripture. When Israel flattened Gaza in 2023–24, killing tens of thousands and producing one of the century’s most visible humanitarian catastrophes, the United States did not sanction it. It increased weapons shipments and vetoed every United Nations resolution of censure. NATO, so quick to invoke democracy in Ukraine, turned suddenly mute in Gaza. The reason is simple: for the Western conscience, Israel is not judged as a state but as a covenant, and criticism becomes heresy.
Saudi Arabia wields the same kind of power from the opposite direction. Its monarchy is corrupt, its military incompetent, its GDP smaller than that of Italy, yet it commands the devotion of two billion Muslims across the planet. Every believer turns toward Mecca five times a day, every pilgrim dreams of the Hajj, and the House of Saud claims to be the custodian of Islam’s holiest cities. That custodianship is a weapon more powerful than oil, more enduring than alliances. A Pakistani soldier may mutiny against his own generals, but he will die for Mecca. An Iranian cleric may curse Riyadh, but he will never deny the pilgrimage. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation does not function as an alliance of independent states but as a vassal to the Hijaz, preserving Saudi legitimacy no matter how many dissidents it executes, no matter how many bombs it drops on Yemen, no matter how deeply it buries women under clerical rule. Saudi Arabia’s army is small, but its unpaid militia is two billion strong, mobilized not by contracts but by theology.
What makes this spectacle even more grotesque is that Israel and Saudi Arabia are rivals and yet twins. Both trace descent from Abraham — Isaac through Sarah, Ishmael through Hagar. Both circumcise, ban pork, despise idols. Their languages, Hebrew and Arabic, are as close as Italian and Spanish. Both worship a transcendent God who is radically removed from the world. Both bind life by law: Halakha and Sharia are parallel systems of command. The two traditions mirror one another in their contempt for plurality, in their insistence that God is elsewhere, that humanity must submit, that law is superior to freedom. They are legalistic civilizations of regulation and prohibition, and their rivalry is a family feud exported as holy war. Gaza and Yemen are not merely territorial disputes; they are fratricidal quarrels dressed up as international crises.
The most damning fact is that their theological claims collapse under scrutiny. Archaeology has dismantled Israel’s biblical conquest narratives, showing cultural continuity and social evolution rather than miraculous invasion. Biblical criticism exposes redactions, contradictions, and interpolations that destroy the myth of divine authorship. Qur’anic studies have revealed variant recensions, redactional layers, and historical borrowings that undermine the fantasy of perfect preservation. Neither tradition survives contact with reason. Yet the world treats their scriptures as untouchable. Criticism of Israel is smeared as anti-Semitism, criticism of Saudi Arabia is branded Islamophobia, and global powers tremble before charges of blasphemy. This is not politics; it is priestcraft enforced at the level of international relations.
The complicity is not limited to Jerusalem and Riyadh. Washington bankrolls Israel not only because of strategy but because of biblical loyalty. Europe, though secular at home, still finds moral cover in the Old Testament. NATO, armed with the rhetoric of democracy, arms an ethno-theocracy with impunity. On the other side, the OIC marches in lockstep with Saudi Arabia, defending its monarchy while ignoring the slaughter of Yemen and the silencing of Muslim dissidents. Even China and Russia, ostensibly secular, bow before the Hijaz for oil and pilgrimage legitimacy. The addiction to theology is global.
Wars that might once be solvable as territorial disputes become endless crusades. Every missile comes with a sermon. Every refugee camp doubles as scripture’s footnote. Humanity bleeds not for strategy but for myth. We are ruled not by generals or economists but by prophets long dead, whose followers wage war in their names. Israel and Saudi Arabia are superpowers because humanity still kneels before Abraham.
The only hope lies in what both traditions fear most: reason. Logical Empiricism demands that claims be verified or dismissed. Dialectical Materialism unmasks religion as ideology, exposing how contradictions sustain social domination. Together they strip theology of its armor and reveal revelation as rhetoric, miracle as propaganda, holy law as political instrument. This does not mean abolishing belief; faith will survive. But it means ending the immunity of scripture from criticism, ending the immunity of states that cloak themselves in revelation. Israel must be judged as a state, not as a covenant. Saudi Arabia must be judged as a monarchy, not as a custodian of Mecca. NATO and the OIC must be judged not as alliances of nations but as chapels of superstition until they cut their ties to metaphysical loyalty.The truth is plain. Israel and Saudi Arabia are not superpowers because of their people, their weapons, or their wealth. They are superpowers because the rest of humanity refuses to stop kneeling. The task of this century is therefore not merely geopolitical but existential: to end the rule of revelation. The real Holy Land is not Jerusalem or Mecca. It is reason itself.
References
Davies, Philip R. In Search of Ancient Israel. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992.
Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York: Free Press, 2001.
Crone, Patricia. Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.
Wansbrough, John. Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
BBC News. “Israel-Gaza War: Death Toll and Humanitarian Crisis Updates.” September 2024.
Al Jazeera. “Saudi Arabia, Iran Restore Ties in Deal Brokered by China.” March 10, 2023.
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