Superpower doesn’t emerge from nothing. It takes shape when collective will converges, goals are clearly defined, and belief takes root among a population. Building a state on pillars like education, economy, health, and shared identity is essential—but not sufficient. These are only the beginnings.
Take Israel, for example. Is it a superpower? Clearly, yes—but not only because of economic strength, military capability, or national cohesion. It also draws power from a stategic alliance with the United States, which has provided over $310 billion in military and economic aid since 1948, including tens of billions in wartime assistance since October 2023. This alliance offers Israel financial backing, diplomatic cover, and near-unquestioned veto power in international forums. Israel has also effectively leveraged global partnerships and capitalized on the weakness or disarray of surrounding states.
Its political leadership, especially in formative decades, aligned itself with an ideology centered on ethnic hierarchy and long-term strategic planning. Israeli statecraft has been shaped by policies that viewed regional affairs through a lens crafted not just by self-interest but by alignment with global powers whose own priorities made Israeli security central to their agendas.
This helps explains why Israel’s security cooperation with neighboring regimes has remained remarkably stable—even when public tensions flare. Beneath the surface, intelligence sharing and joint operations, and defence procurementcontinue to define relationships, smoothing over diplomatic ruprtures and aligning strategic interests. In many cases, regional governments have—whether through quiet consent or deliberate alignment-contributed to Israel’s exceptional position not simply due to domestic vulnerability, but through high-level decisions made in elite policy circles behind closed doors. These decisions often trace back to a legacy of secret accords, post-colonial map-making, and geopolitical deals shaped by the remnants of British and French imperial frameworks.
Israel and the United States may not be literal descendants of ancient empires, but they embody a modern form of imperial logic. From the moment Europe laid claim to the heritage of prior civilizations, it did so not to preserve but to dominate. As historians have noted, Rome absorbed Greek intellectual and artisitc achievements, not to honor their origins, but to reframe them as Roman- erasing lineage to assert cultural supremacy. This pattern endured:Byzantium preserved imperial power through religious theocracy, projecting continuity while reshaping Rome’s legacy under Christian orthodoxy. The Crusades, cloaked expansion in spiritual justification, while Emlightenment-era empires advanced under the banner of reason and “civilization”- even as they subjugated and erased the histories of the colonized. As Edward Said famously argued in Culture and Imperialism, Europe used culture to justify empire, presenting its conquests as the invetiable inharitance of greatness.
This legacy played out with particular force in the Middle East. Britain redrew borders, dismantled traditional governance, and installed monarchies across former Ottoman territories like spoils of war. The United States inherited and modernized this system — not with mandates, but with financial dominance, media influence, and a new form of patron-client geopolitics. In the post-WWII era, the U.S. became both the narrative producer and security guarantor of a world order, projecting itself as liberator while often reinforcing hierarchy. Nowhere is this more evident than in its unwavering support for Israel, which has become a cornerstone of regional architecture, backed not only by military aid but by political insulation in international forums. In this sense, America didn’t break from the imperial tradition — it refined and globalized it.
What we see today is not a new emergence, but a rebranded colonial project. Neither Israel nor the United States see themselves as inheritors of civilization, but as creators of a new beginning—where the past is either erased or repurposed. The thread runs straight: from Rome to Washington, from imperial Jerusalem to occupied Jerusalem. The same forces that wrote history with violence now attempt to rewrite it with modern tools—still rooted in domination.
The conflicts that erupted after the Ottoman Empire collapse weren’t just about borders or resources. They were battles over memory, identity, and civilizational continuity. The goal was never just to seize land only—but to dismantle a unifying cultural project that centered Islam not just as a religion, but as a vehicle for civilizational revival. A project that reanimated forgotten legacies, united fragmented peoples, and preserved living memory.
Islam did not arrive atop thriving civilizations. It emerged amid fractured, fading traditions. It revived Babylonian and Assyrian legacies, gave renewed voice to Aramaic and Nabataean cultures through Arabic, embraced Coptic Egyptian heritage, and even incorporated Judaism—not as an adversary, but as part of a broader civilizational narrative.
That’s not to say Islamic history was free from internal conflict. It saw political and sectarian strife—sometimes bloody, sometimes prolonged. But these were not civilizational ruptures. They were internal debates within a shared cultural space. Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Córdoba competed for leadership—not annihilation. Islamic jurisprudence and theological diversity functioned as intellectual pluralism within a unified framework.
Even more remarkable was the social mobility built into Islamic governance. Unlike many empires where power was inherited by blood, the Islamic world offered real space for ascent. A slave could become a sultan, a freedman a general, a concubine the mother of a caliph. This flexibility—rooted in merit, loyalty, and contribution—remains rare in imperial history. Power was not monopolized by a race or lineage, but opened to those who served the broader system.
What emerged was not cultural colonization, but multidimensional renewal: linguistic, intellectual, architectural. Baghdad, Cairo, Córdoba, Damascus, Mecca, and Istanbul formed a civilizational archipelago—from Nineveh to Granada. Unity didn’t require ethnic purity or nationalist myth. It required living memory. That memory—the real threat to colonial interests—is what today’s wars are designed to erase. What we now witness is not resurgence but simulation: fabricated histories, manufactured nostalgia, and narratives imposed by force.
Cultural symbols across the East have been systematically targeted—not by coincidence, but by design. From the destruction of Afghanistan’s statues to the erasure of Nineveh, the heart of Mesopotamian memory, to the obliteration of Yemen’s Sabaean legacy, Syria’s Palmyrene splendor, and now Iran’s ancient heritage—from Zoroastrianism to the legacy of Cyrus the Great. Cyrus, who ruled not with a sword, but through justice and tolerance, authored one of the earliest human rights declarations. Yet even his legacy is now trampled under modern slogans of “freedom.”
None of this is accidental. Whether disguised in the language of religion, democracy, or media reform, the underlying mission remains the same: erase memory, dismantle civilization, and sever the East from its cultural roots.
Yet the East has never been a blank page. Under unifying civilizational values, it produced statesmen who shaped destiny—not from tribal authority or priestly privilege, but from vision and merit: Mu‘awiyah who stabilized after civil war; Abd al-Malik who unified language, currency, and governance; Harun al-Rashid who built bridges of knowledge; Salah al-Din who fought invaders not by race, but through civilizational claim; Mehmet the Conqueror, who fulfilled spiritual prophecy with strategic brilliance. These were not lone exceptions, but products of a system rooted in unity and memory.
And today? Netanyahu is cast as the era’s mastermind—manipulating perception, burning truth beneath his feet in pursuit of political survival. In his time, politics became spectacle, facts became disposable, and dignity a tradable commodity. His power reflects not his strength, but the vacuum around him. He postures like Herod, a ruler obsessed with internal threats, who silenced dissent and preemptively struck the innocent—not to lead in war, but to survive at home. Yet Herod stayed close to his kingdom; he built, calculated, and died among his people. Netanyahu will not. In war, Netanyahu resembles Titus— distant, ruthless, and bent on leaving his mark through ruin. Titus led the siege of Jerusalem, razed its temple, and wrote his legacy in ashes. Netanyahu wages war the same way: not as a soldier, but as an obsessed strategist of annihilation. Somewhere between the two, Netanyahu performs—not to make history, but to erase it, shielded by the paralysis that surrounds him.
In Palestine, the contradiction is laid bare. Under the same occupation, geography split into two realities. Gaza—under siege and bombardment—remained resistant to internal collapse. Its infrastructure was battered, but its will was intact. No permanent collaborators took root. In contrast, the West Bank was infiltrated politically without a single shot. Resistance is monitored from within; uprisings smothered before birth; occupation reproduced by local tools. The invasion became administrative—no tank required.
Perhaps the sharpest contrast: despite all its power, Israel could not retrieve its captured soldiers from Gaza. Military and intelligence operations failed against a besieged, impoverished resistance fueled by willpower. Yet in other arenas, Israel succeeded—penetrating high-level decision-making in neighboring states. That’s the modern truth of the region: the enemy does not win by being stronger only, but when you are compromised from within. Israel’s most dangerous weapon is not its army—it is an environment stripped of will, where collaborators blend in like a cancer mistaken for healthy cells of the body.