The first minutes of Dinesh D’Souza’s new film are deliberately jarring: unfiltered footage of the October 7 Hamas massacre, presented not as another round in the Middle East conflict but as what he calls a “biblical moment.” From there, The Dragon’s Prophecy pushes a sweeping claim — that the war against Israel today is fueled not only by Islamist groups but also by an unlikely partnership with progressive movements in the West.
The documentary, now rolling out in theaters, weaves together battlefield imagery, interviews with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, and segments on biblical archaeology. Its core argument, however, is political: radical Islamists and secular progressives, despite clashing values, have become “strange bedfellows” in a shared campaign against Israel and the biblical tradition it represents.
A fragile alliance
D’Souza describes the relationship as tactical. Islamists gain access to Western institutions through progressive allies; progressives add another group to their roster of perceived victims. “They don’t belong together,” he said in a conversation at Jewish News Syndicate’s Jerusalem media hub, “but they are somehow allied.”
The film situates this alliance alongside a broader regional axis — Iran, Turkey, Yemen, Sudan — that D’Souza says is intent on erasing Israel rather than building a Palestinian state.
A parallel in Jewish thought
The idea of two incompatible powers uniting against Israel has deep echoes in Jewish tradition. Rabbi Elie Mischel’s 2023 book, The War Against the Bible: Ishmael, Esau and Israel at the End Times, draws on Daniel’s vision of the “fourth kingdom,” a divided empire of iron and clay. Mischel interprets it as an end-times alignment of Ishmael (the Muslim world) and Edom (a secular, post-Christian West) — bonded in their hostility to Israel but unstable by nature.
Mischel’s reading of Daniel — a fragile union of Islam and the secular West against Israel — lands squarely alongside D’Souza’s claim that Islamists and progressives have found common cause today.
More than politics
The Dragon’s Prophecy is not framed as policy analysis but as a spiritual call to arms. D’Souza portrays Israel’s struggle as part of a larger inversion of good and evil, one in which Jews and Christians are urged to stand together. “The dragon,” he notes, borrowing from Revelation, “cannot fight God — so it wages war against God’s people.”
The film is currently showing in select theaters before moving to streaming and DVD release. Rabbi Mischel’s book, The War Against the Bible, is available at Israel365’s online store.
