Sorry, I'm not following what you mean with the first paragraph. If you mean those places were occupied by Europeans, sure. As I've observed before, Israel's tragedy is it wants to play by 19th century rules that the UN was created to end.

As for the second, "great" in this context means "large", not "superior". For example: https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/course/five-great-religions-world-part-1