Seit 2010 lebe ich in Cork. „Either you love it or you hate it, there’s nothing in between.“ Bei mir war es mit Cork Liebe auf den ersten Blick. Viel ist in den Jahren passiert und manchmal war es nicht ganz leicht, aber ich habe es nie bereut. Auf diesem Blog schreibe ich über Cork, Irland, über Gutes und weniger Gutes. Da mich Politik immer interessiert hat und ich auch involviert war, ist mein Blick kritisch und manchmal weniger kritisch und ich hoffe mein Blog hilft dem Einen oder Anderen uns (Iren) besser zu verstehen. Was mir auch am Herzen liegt ist die Klischees die Einige haben zu entkräften.
Have you ever heard of Bethel Solomons, Louis Bookman, or Joseph Abrahams? No? Well, many Irish people seem to have never heard these names either, even though these three represented Ireland a long time ago.
Doctor Bethel Solomons, 10 Games for Ireland
I was reminded of these stories because in Ireland, in many circles, it has become fashionable again to act out anti-Semitism against Jews in this country and the state of Israel as a Jewish collective. For someone who has studied Irish history and walked through Cork following the traces of the Civil War upon arriving here, it is a slap in the face to see how little most people in this country know their own history.
The appetite of Irish intellectuals for romanticizing authoritarian regimes under the banner of anti-imperialism has a long genealogy. As Fergal Lenehan highlights in his analysis of Elizabeth Shaw’s East German memoirs (Back in the GDR), western expatriates could comfortably enjoy the status and privileges of East Berlin’s cultural elite while remaining willfully blind to the brutal realities of the SED police state. It is the same selective myopia that allows today’s political establishment to champion autocratic movements abroad while ignoring the totalitarian nature of their rule.
Even on the rare occasions when Yemen enters the Irish activist consciousness, the narrative is instantly sanitized. As noted in coverage of Dublin demonstrations (Cassandra Voices), the focus is selectively narrowed to Saudi Arabia’s state intervention—primarily because it fits a familiar anti-Western template—while the brutal, anti-Semitic, and totalitarian reality of the Houthi regime is ignored. The suffering of civilians is never the primary concern; it is merely an instrument, weaponized only when it targets a pre-approved adversary.
And even though Jews are normal people like everyone else, the anti-Semite weaves a story that makes the Jew seem superhuman. There are big and small Jews, there are fat and thin Jews, there are stupid and clever Jews, there are murderers and thieves among the Jews, criminals and assholes. The anti-Semite always seeks to see the superiority of the Jews behind it, do you see how criminal the Jews are? They were worse than the Mafia! „If you put that in relation, then Jewish suspects are a shit in the Crime statistics, but not for those who believe they have the insight.
It was thought that with the end of Nazi rule, the virus had been eradicated; no Nazis, no anti-Semites. The virus, however, was completely unimpressed by this. After the Mapai decided to move on from a socialist course to a western one, Stalin changed his views about the Jews and wrote an instruction that is still used today: anti-Zionism. Suddenly the Jew was a Zionist, period. And for Stalin, all Zionists were rootless cosmopolitans – безродный космополит besrodny kosmopolit
Linking anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism: The anti-Zionist struggle was used to persecute Jewish culture, institutions, and individuals in the Soviet Union without openly calling it anti-Semitism.
Shortly after October 7, 2023, they were back again; the accusations that Israel was committing genocide. The 1,200 Israelis and foreigners who stayed in Israel and were victims of the massacres were either denied or belittled. The fact that the terrorists and accompanying civilians filmed themselves and put these films online is denied by the so-called Palestine supporters. Even that independent sources have confirmed the information is not considered proof. Instead, they invoke the Hannibal Directive and claim that the IDF carried out the massacres itself. One of the worst figures in this is UN spokeswoman Francesca Albanese; she and her husband are fervent anti-Semites, and they probably had multiple orgasms when the first reports came about October 7. The woman lies that the bars are bending and claims to this day that mass rapes never took place.
And if you really believe that the Gaza Sumud is a fleet for the liberation of Gaza, you should change your pacifier. This is not about any supplies that can just as easily be dropped off at the post office, due to their low content, but it is about forcing Israel to surrender so that these hobby activists can go alongside Hamas and Fatah to Jerusalem, where they will then be exterminated in mass shootings, because they have more than fulfilled their purpose as useful idiots, while throwing the Queers for Palestine off the roof somewhere; you don’t want to waste any ammunition.
The difference between the modern and the old Jew haters is that the modern have abused the Palestinians, while the old have openly talked about what they plan to do with the Jews and have never made a secret of it. They only used the anti-Semitism in Europe to get there faster. And today, those who collaborated with the Nazis are actually after the war. were resistance fighters. Today, they are again at the forefront when it comes to withdrawing protection from Jews.
The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion. It does not shy away from using all means and employing all malicious and contemptible methods to achieve its goal. In its infiltration and espionage operations, it relies heavily on the secret organizations it has established, such as the Freemasons, the Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions. They aim to undermine societies, destroy values, corrupt consciences, defile character and destroy Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its forms to facilitate their control and expansion. The Charter of Hamas, Article 28, 1988 version
Neither Hamas nor the Islamists of Daesh, for example, make a secret of what will happen when they have destroyed Israel. Their goal is to establish a worldwide caliphate, which for the Jews who claim to be anti-Zionists would mean that they are targets of the will to destroy. Yisroel Dovid Weiss, the spokesperson of the new karta franchise, would be just as his buddies would receive dhimi status and be allowed to pay Yziya. He would quickly realize that Jews, regardless of their rejection of the state of Israel, were like life in a ghetto without rights to criticize. Even the Satmar Jews could wait until Matthew last for the Messiah to lead them into the promised land; that would no longer exist if all the Jew haters prevailed.
No country would offer them protection and the Jewish state would cease to exist. Finkelstein would have the opportunity to experience for himself what his parents experienced in Romania. Maybe he can still publish but only what gets censored. And Chomsky can speak from morning to evening about the state of Israel allegedly killing over 3 million Palestinians, he would get a tired smile.
Later, starting in 1928, they approached the NSDAP, which was already taken
caricature-like moves, especially when reading a booklet
published, in which antisemitism in Germany was described as
denoted malicious misrepresentation. Naumann came to the concentration camp and
died in 1939 as a result. Many followed his fate or
emigrated abroad. Theodor Lessing defined the Jewish
self-hatred as follows
Psychological mechanism: Lessing saw self-hatred not as a specifically Jewish phenomenon, but as the psychological response of a minority that submits to the values and prejudices of the dominant majority society.
Alienation and assimilation: For Lessing, inner division resulted from assimilation. Those affected desperately tried to escape the anti-Semitic stereotypes of the environment through self-denial and over-identification with the Aryan culture.
Escape from one’s own identity: Instead of accepting one’s heritage as an enrichment, Judaism was perceived as a blemish, leading to projections and hatred of one’s group.
History has shown that Jews were not even sure when they converted; they were always subject to the goodwill of those in whose midst they lived. Every event that required a scapegoat, the local Jews were handed over to the mob. Rulers do protect them, but only until a certain point when the rulers decide that it would be better to sacrifice a few Jews than to tolerate an uprising against the government.
Before I moved to Ireland in 2010, I had been studying Irish history in depth since my youth. I read the works of Irish writers; I was particularly deeply moved by Liam O’Flaherty’s novel ‘Famine’ (published in German as ‘Zornige grüne Insel’), which depicts the fate of a family during the Great Famine. I was equally influenced by the film ‘Cassidy, the Rebel’, based on the autobiographies of Seán O’Casey – whose books I later bought here in Ireland.
At the time, however, I didn’t know much about the Jewish history of Ireland. I was pleasantly surprised when, at Merchant’s Quay in Cork, a rabbi hurried past me and, whilst on the bus, I observed a Jewish man – recognisable by his kippah – sitting quite naturally next to a Muslim woman. This was a sense of normality in public spaces that I’d previously only experienced in Vienna, when travelling through Jewish neighbourhoods on my way to a job interview, but never in Germany.
My interest in the subject was, however, piqued in a painful way when I went shopping in Cork city centre one Saturday. It was shortly after the Mavi Marmaraincident. The streets were full of demonstrators chanting anti-Semitic slogans. On stages, Israel was condemned across the board, and of course representatives of BDS and IPSC were also present. Whilst BDS activists were making their way through the shops, arbitrarily labelling goods from Israel, IPSC leaders stood outside the shops shouting calls for a boycott.
I tried to strike up a conversation with these people, but was completely ignored – an experience that really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me: anti-Semites aren’t interested in a genuine exchange of views. They do not care what Jews do or do not do; the mere existence of Israel merely serves as a licence for them to vent their hatred of Jews on the streets. When I asked why they did not demonstrate with the same vehemence against the crimes in Sudan or Iran, I received the curt reply that, after all, one ‘cannot concern oneself with everything’. Nobody was demanding that – but had they looked more closely at geopolitics, they would have realised that, by regional standards, the Mavi Marmara incident was more akin to a neighbourhood dispute. And a look at international maritime law would have shown that the Israeli blockade was legally justified – however much that might have displeased these activists.
These experiences gave me a great deal to think about. I began to systematically study the Jewish history of this country. My library contained numerous works on the War of Independence and the Civil War, but there was hardly anything on Jewish life in Ireland – as if Jews had never existed here. It was a painstaking search for clues, but the deeper I dug, the more I unearthed.
By 1232, there was presumably already an established Jewish community, as a royal charter issued by Henry III on 28 July 1232 appointed Peter de Rivaux to the office of treasurer and granted him ‘custody of the King’s Jewish community in Ireland’ (custodiam Judaismi nostri in Hibernia). The charter instructed all Jews in Ireland to obey Peter as the king’s administrator. This community probably lived in or near Dublin. Furthermore, the Dublin ‘White Book’ of 1241 contains a deed of conveyance with the clause ‘vel in Judaismo ponere’, which explicitly prohibited resale to Jews. Following the Expulsion Edict of 1290, by which King Edward I expelled all Jews from England, the Jews living in the English Palearound Dublin presumably also had to leave the country.
It was not until the time of Oliver Cromwell, who lifted the ban on Jewish settlement in the Crown’s territories, that Jewish life began to flourish again in Ireland. As early as 1660, the first synagogue community was established near Dublin Castle. In the centuries that followed, Jews continued to immigrate – particularly from Eastern Europe, fleeing the Tsarist pogroms. For many of them, Ireland, just like the British port authorities, was a stopover on the way to the New World.
XII. And be it enacted, That the Society of Friends commonly called Quakers, and also Persons professing the Jewish Religion, may continue to contract and solemnize Marriage according to the Usages of the said society and of the said Persons respectively; and every such Marriage shall be deemed good in Law, provided that the Parties to such Marriage be both of the said Society, or both Persons professing the Jewish Religion respectively; provided also, that Notice to the Registrar shall have been given, and the Registrar’s Certificate shall have issued in manner herein-after provided.
Jewish solidarity during the Great Famine (1845–1852)
In 2010, historical documents were published that attest to the scale of this aid: when mass deaths began in Ireland in 1846, Rabbi Jacques Judah Lyons of the Shearith Israel synagogue in New York appealed to his congregation. On 8 March 1847, he organised an emergency meeting on Crosby Street to raise funds for the starving people of Ireland. In his moving speech, Lyons – who was also one of the founders of the Jews Hospital (now Mount Sinai) – emphasised that, despite the congregation’s own financial hardships, they must help. When asked why they should come to the aid of strangers on another continent, he replied:
“There is but one bond between us and those who suffer: that bond is humanity. Its appeal to the heart overcomes every obstacle. Climate, skin colour and creed are no barriers to stand in the way.”
In this synagogue alone, around 1,000 dollars were collected – equivalent to over 80,000 dollars today. The Shaaray Tefila Synagogue also joined the effort, and the banker August Belmont personally contributed 500 dollars. Contemporary newspapers reported that the New York donations to the Irish Relief Committee equalled the total sums raised by the entire wealthy aristocracy in Ireland itself.
The fact that these events are scarcely known in Ireland today shows just how deeply the veil of historical oblivion has been drawn. It is time to bring these historical facts back to light.
The Gaelic Cultural Revival and Jewish Emancipation in Ireland
Following the devastating decades of the Great Famine, the Irish sense of identity began to take on a radically new form in the second half of the 19th century. It was no longer merely a matter of political survival or leasehold reforms within the framework of the Land League, but of the rebirth of a distinct national and cultural identity. The Gaelic cultural revival – led by organisations such as the Gaelic League (An Conradh na Gaeilge, founded in 1893) and the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA, founded in 1884) – set itself the goal of preserving the Irish language, music, literature and traditions from complete extinction.
Ellen Bischoffsheim was born in London in 1857, the daughter of the Jewish banker Salomon Hayum Bischoffsheim. She came to Kilkenny through her marriage to William Cuffe, the 5th Earl of Desart. Following her husband’s early death in 1898, she did not use her immense inheritance to lead a secluded life in high society, but instead invested it with unparalleled passion in the economic and cultural revival of Ireland.
Whilst the Countess of Desart promoted the cultural revival from the heights of philanthropy, a process no less significant was taking place at grassroots level. From the 1880s onwards, the wave of Tsarist pogroms in the Russian Empire drove thousands of Eastern European Jews – so-called Litvaks from Lithuania and Poland – to Ireland. Many of them settled in Dublin (where the neighbourhood around Clanbrassil Street soon became known as ‘Little Jerusalem’) and in Cork.
For these Jewish immigrants, the Gaelic language revival was by no means a foreign concept. On the contrary: they came from a culture that, through the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) and the emerging Zionist movement, was undergoing precisely the same process – the revival of Hebrew from a purely sacred written language into the living, everyday language of a people in the process of reconstituting itself.
Where there is much light, there are also shadows. Whilst Jewish citizens and Irish cultural figures were drawing closer in Dublin and Kilkenny at the turn of the century, January 1904 saw the darkest events in the history of Irish-Jewish coexistence unfold in Limerick: the so-called Limerick pogrom or Limerick boycott.
The Jewish community in Limerick was small – at that time it numbered around 150 people, mostly destitute immigrants from Lithuania who had painstakingly built a livelihood for themselves as pedlars or small traders. They often sold clothing and household goods on hire purchase to the impoverished Catholic working class.
The spark was ignited by a Redemptorist priest named John Creagh. In a series of inflammatory sermons at the Redemptorist church, he resorted to the oldest anti-Semitic stereotypes: He accused the small He accused the small Jewish traders of usury having come to ‘suck the blood out of the Irish’, and linked economic envy with early Christian anti-Judaism. Creagh explicitly called on the population to sever all business and social ties with Jews.
The consequences were devastating. Although – unlike the bloody pogroms in Tsarist Russia – no murders took place, the economic and social impact was brutal:
Jewish traders were harassed, verbally abused and, in some cases, pelted with stones in the streets.
Catholic customers refused to settle their debts with Jewish traders or to continue shopping with them.
The small community’s economic livelihood collapsed completely within a few months. More than two-thirds of Jewish families were forced to leave Limerick; many of them fled on to Cork, where they were welcomed with open arms.
The reaction of the Irish public and the stance of Arthur Griffith
However, the events in Limerick are particularly revealing from a historical perspective because the reactions to them laid bare the divided nature of the Irish national movement at the time.
On the one hand, there were fierce protests against the agitation:
Leaders such as Michael Davitt– the founder of the Irish Land League, who had personally documented the Tsarist pogroms in Chișinău – publicly and uncompromisingly condemned the boycott as a disgrace to Ireland.
Similarly, both Protestant and enlightened Catholic citizens in Limerick and Cork rallied to the defence of those affected.
On the other hand was Arthur Griffith, the founder of the newspaper The United Irishman and later founder of Sinn Féin. Griffith initially defended the calls for a boycott vehemently in his articles from 1904 and 1905. From today’s perspective, Griffith is therefore often broadly labelled as a purely racist anti-Semite. However, a closer look at the primary sources reveals a deeper, albeit disturbing, historical dynamic:
Griffith’s early stance did not stem from pure biological racial hatred, but from his obsessive economic nationalism. In his theory of Sinn Féin (‘Ourselves’), he posited that Ireland could only defy the British Empire through absolute economic self-sufficiency. He viewed foreign traders and middlemen – as he mistakenly perceived the Jewish pedlars to be – as a disruptive element in this self-sufficient economic cycle. Furthermore, he feared that the Jewish minority might, out of pragmatism, come to terms with the British Crown.
Through direct exchange with leading figures of the Jewish community in Dublin – most notably the future Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog – Griffith fundamentally revised his prejudices. He came to realise two crucial things:
Irish Jews were not henchmen of British imperialism, but were committing themselves with immense loyalty and enthusiasm to the Irish struggle for independence.
Zionism – the Jewish people’s quest for national rebirth, their own language, and state sovereignty in Eretz Israel – displayed striking parallels to his own vision for Ireland.
Griffith began to study the writings of Theodor Herzl and soon publicly praised Zionism as an exemplary model for the Irish liberation struggle. When he led the Irish delegation in the negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London in 1921 and became President of Dáil Éireann in 1922, he maintained close, warm friendships with the Jewish community.
The Limerick boycott of 1904 remains a dark chapter. Yet historical reality also demonstrates how the fruits of mutual respect and Zionist-Irish dialogue ultimately overcame the anti-Semitic agitation of a single priest.
The evolution of a statesman
What modern activists and superficial social media narratives completely ignore, however, is the remarkable evolution in Arthur Griffith’s thinking in the years that followed.
Through direct exchange with leading figures of the Jewish community in Dublin – most notably the future Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog – Griffith fundamentally revised his prejudices. He came to realise two crucial things:
Irish Jews were not henchmen of British imperialism, but were committing themselves with immense loyalty and enthusiasm to the Irish struggle for independence.
Zionism – the Jewish people’s quest for national rebirth, their own language, and state sovereignty in Eretz Israel – displayed striking parallels to his own vision for Ireland.
Griffith began to study the writings of Theodor Herzl and soon publicly praised Zionism as an exemplary model for the Irish liberation struggle. When he led the Irish delegation in the negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London in 1921 and became President of Dáil Éireann in 1922, he maintained close, warm friendships with the Jewish community.
The Limerick boycott of 1904 remains a dark chapter. Yet historical reality also demonstrates how the fruits of mutual respect and Zionist-Irish dialogue ultimately overcame the anti-Semitic agitation of a single priest.
Shoulder to shoulder: How Jewish communities supported the Irish cause
When Ireland fought the British Crown in the War of Independence between 1919 and 1921, it was not merely a military conflict on the island, but a global diplomatic and financial battle. On both fronts, Jewish figures and Zionist networks played a pivotal role in advancing the Irish cause.
The transatlantic alliance: De Valera, Brandeis, and Zionist lessons
When Éamon de Valera travelled to the United States in 1919 to raise funds for the Dáil Bonds (the loans of the self-declared Irish Republic) and seek political recognition, he found his strongest allies among Jewish-American and Zionist leadership circles.
Leading American Zionists – most notably US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Rabbi Stephen Wise – viewed the Irish struggle against the British Empire as a direct parallel to the Zionist quest for self-determination in Palestine.
The Zionist movement in the US even served as an organizational blueprint for Irish representatives:
Financial networks: Irish-American organisations, such as the Friends of Irish Freedom, adopted methods from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to effectively raise funds.
Operatives on the ground: Arms, safe houses, and forged passports
In Ireland itself, the support of the Jewish community was by no means limited to sympathetic words. Jewish citizens risked their lives in the underground struggle of the Irish Republican Army (IRA):
The network in ‚Little Jerusalem‘: The Jewish working-class population in Dublin’s Clanbrassil Street opened their homes as safe houses for IRA fighters on the run. Notable figures such as A.J. ‚Chaim‘ Leventhal supported the Dáil cabinet apparatus, while Jewish printing presses produced illegal republican pamphlets and passports.
Medical care: Jewish doctors in Dublin treated wounded IRA men in secrecy without informing the British military authorities.
When the truce was declared in 1921, the gratitude of the Irish leadership was unmistakable. It was no coincidence that figures like Robert Briscoe later became founding members of Fianna Fáil and held top offices in the Republic for decades.
Anyone who claims today that Irish independence was a purely Catholic-Gaelic achievement standing in natural hostility to Zionism grotesquely distorts the historical record. The Jewish community did not stand on the sidelines – it fought, financed, and bled for a free Ireland.
The Irish model as inspiration for Zionism – And the ‚Sinn Féin Rabbi‘
Mutual inspiration went far beyond logistics and fundraising drives. For many leading figures of the Zionist movement in the early 20th century, the Irish liberation struggleserved as a primary case study of how a small, oppressed nation could reclaim its statehood and culture against a world power.
Linguistic and cultural revival: The Gaelic language revival served as a direct example of how a historically suppressed language could be re-anchored among the people – a parallel that Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and other pioneers of modern Hebrew closely observed.
Tactical methods: The uncompromising refusal to cooperate with colonial authorities, as well as methods of both passive and active resistance, informed debates within the Zionist leadership in Mandate Palestine.
Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog: The Republic’s bridge-builder
Appointed Rabbi of Belfast in 1916 and the first Chief Rabbi of the Irish Free State in 1919, Herzog was by no means a detached observer of political upheaval. He learned Irish (Gaeilge) fluently, openly supported the Irish struggle for independence, and maintained close, warm friendships with Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins. Due to his tireless devotion to the republican cause, he became affectionately known in popular parlance as the ‚Sinn Féin Rabbi‘.
During the War of Independence, Herzog used his religious office and network to provide sanctuary to Irish insurgents and to mediate diplomatically between the conflicting parties. His posture was rooted in the deep conviction that the Irish desire for freedom and the Zionist quest for a Jewish homeland were two sides of the same coin of universal justice.
The legacy: From Belfast and Dublin to Jerusalem
This Irish-Jewish symbiosis left a lasting mark on the history of both nations:
If the founding era of modern Ireland was marked by such a deep symbiosis between Irish Republicans and Zionist pioneers, how did the deep chasm that opened up between Dublin and Jerusalem in the decades following the Second World War come about?
During the 1940s and 1950s, the Irish Department of External Affairs defined its position in the Middle East almost exclusively through the directives of the Holy See:
Clerical concerns over geopolitical analysis: Irish diplomats regularly consulted with the Papal Nuncio in Dublin before making decisions regarding the Middle East. The fate of the State of Israel was not treated in government circles as a question of national liberation, but primarily deliberated as a Catholic-theological and ecclesiastical issue.
This dependency led to the paradoxical historical outcome that the very Irish politicians who had consistently fought for the absolute sovereignty of their own Republic allowed their Middle East policy to be dictated by Rome’s pulpit diplomacy for decades. Only with the secularisation of Irish society and Ireland’s accession to the EEC in 1973 did Dublin gradually untether itself from this clerical guardianship.
Conclusion: Today’s historical amnesia
When activists from the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) or the BDS movement march through the streets of Cork and Dublin today, storming supermarket shelves and framing the State of Israel as an irreconcilable enemy, they do so in the belief that they are adhering to a „deeply rooted Irish tradition“.
„Sinn Féin’s Rabbi“:Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog spoke fluent Irish, opposed the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty (Partition), and hid IRA fighters in his home.
The 1930s Rescue:The restrictive refugee policies of the 1930s came from anti-Semitic bureaucrats in the Department of Justice (e.g., Charles Bewley), not the republican movement. It was Éamon de Valera himself who personally overruled his department to rescue Jewish orphans.
Vetting Standards: In war zones where official registries are destroyed or controlled by non-state actors (like Hamas), issuing unvetted visas creates severe security and legal liability for the State.
Political Hypocrisy: Opposition parties demanding wholesale visa waivers would be the first to accuse the Government of a „security failure“ if an unvetted individual committed an offense in Ireland.
Myth:„International scholarships don’t affect Irish students or taxpayers.“
Fact: While tuition may be covered by university funds, infrastructure, housing, and public services are finite resources funded by the Irish taxpayer.
Key Evidence:
The Student Housing Crisis: Thousands of Irish students are forced to defer college or commute hours daily because student accommodation is overstretched or repurposed.
The SUSI Gap: Working-class and middle-class Irish families just above the SUSI grant threshold struggle with massive living costs. Prioritizing fully-funded packages for non-citizens while domestic students are priced out creates justifiable public resentment.
Section 4: Theological Paternalism (Debunking „Real Jews are Anti-Zionist“)
Myth:„Zionism contradicts the Torah and Christian values.“
Fact: Non-Jews lecturing Jewish people on how to interpret their own scriptures or identity is paternalistic and anti-Semitic.
Key Evidence:
Liturgical Roots: The connection to Zion and Jerusalem is not a 19th-century European invention; it has been the core of Jewish prayer (Shemoneh Esrei, Seder: „Next year in Jerusalem“) for over 3,000 years.
Demographic Reality: Data (e.g., Pew Research) consistently shows that over 80% of global Jewry considers connection to Israel an essential part of their identity.
A socio-political analysis of the chronic tension between Irish ethics-driven politics and functional governance.
he new Falcon 6X jet PICTURE: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE
The news reads like administrative satire, yet it lays bare the fundamental dilemma of modern statecraft: Ireland is acquiring a new government jet—a Cessna Citation Longitude costing approximately €53 million—while deliberately foregoing its primary all-weather landing system. The reason? The certified manufacturer of the required avionics sensor is the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems. Fearing political backlash and eager to signal moral posture regarding the Middle East, the state settled for an aircraft that remains grounded whenever dense fog rolls over Dublin or Baldonnel.
This incident is not an isolated procurement hiccup. It serves as a textbook case study for a structural ailment in Irish foreign and security policy: the systematic prioritization of symbolic politics over functional governance.
1. The Symbolism of Moral Abstinence
Historically, Irish foreign policy relies on a deeply ingrained self-image: Ireland views itself on the international stage as an unblemished actor—free of a colonial legacy, committed to international law, and highly sensitive to issues of global justice.
Moral Consistency as State Reason: Rejecting components of Israeli origin satisfies a broad political and societal expectation. Within this discourse, avoiding commercial ties with the military-industrial complex of specific nations is framed as a prerequisite for political integrity.
Symbol Trumps Purpose: This primacy of moral posturing ensures that the process of procurement is judged through ethical filters, rather than evaluating the outcome against operational metrics—such as system reliability during critical medical evacuations or diplomatic transport.
2. The Functional Erosion of State Infrastructure
Contrasting this moral framework is the physical reality of executive duties. Ireland’s defense and logistical infrastructure—ranging from maritime surveillance and airspace monitoring to the Ministerial Air Transport Service (MATS)—has suffered from decades of neglect rooted in political detachment.
Functional Self-Amputation: When a €53 million state asset cannot land during low visibility because a standard feature was stripped for political optics, moral signaling turns into functional self-amputation.
The Misunderstanding of Neutrality: Paradoxically, military neutrality under international law requires a particularly capable and self-reliant defense and transport infrastructure, given the absence of automatic NATO alliance guarantees. Irish practice, however, frequently mistakes neutrality for technical and operational absenteeism.
3. Collision with Global Supply Chains
Furthermore, this case exposes the naivety of moralizing politics when interacting with global markets. The notion that a state can isolate „ethically pure“ supply chains within defense and aerospace technology fails to withstand reality.
Monopolistic Structures in Aerospace: Highly specialized subsystems—whether night-vision technology, advanced avionics, or enhanced vision sensors—are dominated worldwide by a handful of specialized conglomerates. Excluding key market players on ethical grounds immediately runs into hard limits of availability.
Pragmatism vs. Moral Posturing: Any sovereign purchasing on the global market faces a choice: accept the realities of integrated defense supply chains, or accept direct operational handicaps to preserve an unblemished moral profile.
Conclusion
The absurdity of an incomplete government jet highlights the core flaw of a compromised political discourse: confusing moral posturing with state readiness. When symbolic gestures consistently override practical utility, the result is a policy framework that retains its moral high ground—while its government jet remains stuck on the tarmac in the fog.
Eine soziopolitische Analyse zur chronischen Spannung zwischen irischer Gesinnungsethik und staatlicher Funktionsfähigkeit.
Stein des Anstoß, das neue Flugzeug für 53 Mio Euro Quelle: The new Falcon 6X jet PICTURE: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE
Die Nachricht klingt wie eine Realsatire aus der Verwaltung, legt aber in Wahrheit das fundamentale Dilemma moderner Regierungspolitik offen: Irland beschafft für rund 53 Millionen Euro ein neues Regierungsflugzeug vom Typ Cessna Citation Longitude – verzichtet jedoch bewusst auf das primär vorgesehene Allwetter-Landesystem. Der Grund? Der zertifizierte Hersteller der Sensorik ist der israelische Rüstungskonzern Elbit Systems. Aus Sorge vor politischem Gegenwind und um moralische Haltung im Nahost-Konflikt zu demonstrieren, nimmt man ein Flugzeug in Kauf, das bei dichtem Nebel über Dublin oder Baldonnel am Boden bleiben muss.
Dieser Fall ist kein isoliertes Beschaffungsproblem. Er wirkt wie eine Brennglas-Metapher für das strukturelle Dilemma der irischen Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik: Die systematische Überordnung von Symbolpolitik über die pragmatische Handlungsfähigkeit des Staates.
1. Die Symbolik der moralischen Abstinenz
Die irische Außenpolitik basiert historisch auf einem tief verankerten Selbstverständnis: Irland versteht sich im internationalen Gefüge als unbelasteter Akteur – ohne kolonialistisches Erbe, dem Völkerrecht verpflichtet und mit hoher gesellschaftlicher Sensibilität für globale Gerechtigkeitsfragen.
Moralische Konsistenz als Staatsräson: Der Verzicht auf Komponenten israelischer Herkunft bedient eine breite politische und gesellschaftliche Erwartungshaltung. In diesem Diskurs gilt das konsequente Vermeiden von Geschäften mit dem militärisch-industriellen Komplex bestimmter Staaten als Grundbedingung politischer Glaubwürdigkeit.
Das Symbol schlägt den Zweck: Das Primat der Gesinnung führt dazu, dass der Prozess der Beschaffung nach ethischen Filterkriterien bewertet wird, statt das Ergebnis an rein operationalen Kriterien – etwa der Zuverlässigkeit bei Rettungs- und Regierungseinsätzen – zu messen.
2. Die funktionale Erosion staatlicher Infrastruktur
Dem gegenüber steht die physische Realität exekutiver Staatsaufgaben. Die militärische und logistische Infrastruktur Irlands – von der Seeüberwachung über die Luftraumverteidigung bis hin zum Ministerial Air Transport Service (MATS) – leidet seit Jahrzehnten unter einer durch politische Abstinenz begründeten Unterfinanzierung.
Funktionale Selbstamputation: Wenn ein staatliches Arbeitsgerät für 53 Millionen Euro bei schlechter Sicht nicht landen kann, weil das zur Vollausstattung gehörende System aus politischen Erwägungen gestrichen wurde, wandelt sich die moralische Geste in funktionale Selbstamputation.
Das Missverständnis der Neutralität: Völkerrechtliche Neutralität erfordert paradoxerweise eine besonders funktionstüchtige, eigenständige Verteidigungs- und Transportinfrastruktur, da man nicht automatisch auf Bündnisressourcen der NATO zurückgreifen kann. Die irische Praxis verwechselt Neutralität jedoch häufig mit technischer und defensiver Abwesenheit.
3. Der Konflikt mit der globalen Lieferkette
Der Fall offenbart zudem die Naivität moderner Haltungspolitik gegenüber globalen Märkten. Die Vorstellung, man könne im Bereich der Verteidigungs- und Luftfahrttechnologie „ethisch reine“ Lieferketten isolieren, hält der Realität nicht stand.
Monopolstrukturen im Rüstungssektor: Hochspezialisierte Subsysteme – ob Nachtsichttechnik, Avionik oder Sensorik – werden weltweit von wenigen spezialisierten Konzernen beherrscht. Wer Akteure aus ethischen Gründen ausschließt, stößt in der Hochtechnologie augenblicklich an harte Verfügbarkeitsgrenzen.
Pragmatismus vs. Gesinnung: Ein Staat, der am globalen Markt einkauft, muss sich entscheiden: Akzeptiert er die Realität integrierter Lieferketten, oder nimmt er direkte Einschränkungen seiner staatlichen Infrastruktur in Kauf, um ein unverändertes Moralprofil zu pflegen?
Fazit
Die Posse um das unvollständige Regierungsflugzeug verdeutlicht das Kernproblem einer verengten Debattenkultur: Die Verwechslung von Symbolpolitik mit staatlicher Vorsorge. Wer die moralische Pose konsequent über die funktionale Handlungsfähigkeit stellt, erhält am Ende eine Politik, die zwar ethische Haltung bewahrt – deren Regierungsjet bei Nebel jedoch am Boden bleiben muss.
The Zionists secured their so-called “Jewish State”. But they still needed to manufacture a Jewish majority. And so they conducted the Nakba, forcing around 750,000 Gentiles to flee. This provoked a backlash, the Jewish Nakba – the displacement of around 850,000 Arab Jews, many of whom were left with no choice but to move to Israel. The Mossad LeAliyah Bet and the Jewish Agency did what they could to encourage this migration – cajoling Jews into moving to the so-called “Jewish State” – downgrading Holocaust survivors to the status of “human material”, and preventing them from seeking refuge in other lands. Their objective was chilling: To “liquidate” the Jewish Diaspora.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Arab Jews were treated with derision from the moment they arrived in Israel – sprayed with a toxic chemical, and thrown into overcrowded, unsanitary camps. Some remained in those places, which evolved into slums, while others were made to live in dangerous locales – acting as human shields. Tens-of-thousands of their children were subjected to hazardous doses of X-ray radiation. And almost all the adults were made to do hard labour – farming the worst soil, or working in one-factory towns – receiving lower wages […]“
Part 4: The Exploitation of the Mizrahim – How Joss Sheldon hijacks the history of Oriental Jews for his hate campaign
Anyone who thought that Joss Sheldon had already reached the lowest depths of rhetorical integrity in the first chapters of his work will be proven wrong in Chapters 4 and 5. Here, he ventures into one of the most complex and painful topics in Israeli social history: the flight, expulsion and subsequent integration of the Mizrahim (Jews from the Middle East and North Africa).
What, in the hands of historically reputable authors, constitutes a nuanced analysis of the causes of flight, state failure, paternalism and painful integration crises, degenerates in Sheldon’s work into a single anti-Semitic circular argument: The victims are to blame, the persecutors are exonerated, and the Zionist state is declared the diabolical mastermind behind their own suffering.
Let us dissect Sheldon’s method by examining his central claims.
1. The exoneration of the persecuting states
Sheldon describes the expulsion of around 850,000 Jews from the Arab states in a single, offhand sentence:
“This provoked a backlash, the Jewish Nakba – the displacement of around 850,000 Arab Jews […]”
With this phrasing, Sheldon pulls off a breathtaking reversal of perpetrator and victim:
Exonerating the dictatorships: The Arab regimes – from Iraq and Egypt to Libya and Syria – are completely absolved of responsibility for state-organised pogroms, expropriations, the revocation of citizenship and executions. The expulsion of the Jews is rewritten as an ‘understandable human reaction’ (backlash) to the events of 1948.
The erasure of chronology: Sheldon deliberately ignores the fact that state and societal anti-Semitism in many of these countries did not suddenly appear out of the blue in 1948. The bloody pogrom in Baghdad (Farhud) took place in 1941 – fuelled by Nazi German propaganda and the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini, years before the founding of the State of Israel.
Collective responsibility as a principle: By portraying the expulsion of Jewish civilians from Iraq, Yemen or Egypt as a ‘logical consequence’, Sheldon adopts precisely the logic of the anti-Semitic persecutors: anyone who is Jewish is personally responsible for everything that happens in Palestine.
2. Rescue as a conspiracy: The fairy tale of the ‘liquidation of the Diaspora’
To prevent the mass emigration of the Mizrahim from appearing as a rescue from imminent persecution, Sheldon must fabricate a conspiracy. He claims that the Jewish Agency and the Mossad LeAliyah Bet forced the Jews out of their home countries in order to ‘liquidate’ the Diaspora.
3. DDT, tent camps and rationing: the logic of emergency management versus the racial myth
Chapter 5 reads like a catalogue of horrors. Sheldon lists DDT spraying, squalid camps (Ma’abarot) and forced labour to paint a picture in which Ashkenazi Jews kept their Oriental co-religionists as slaves and subjected them to biological harassment.
This is where Sheldon’s most venomous technique comes to the fore: he takes real historical hardships and strips them completely of their context.
The miracle of logistics: Israel, which had only just been founded and had been impoverished by the War of Independence, doubled its population within a few years. There was no infrastructure, no housing and hardly any food (the era of Tzena rationing).
4. The Exploitation of Trauma: Ringworm and the Yemeni Children
Sheldon’s argument becomes particularly repugnant where he misuses real, tragic chapters of Israeli history for his hate-mongering:
Radiation treatment for ringworm (Ringworm Affair):Sheldon mutters about “dangerous doses of radiation” for tens of thousands of Mizrahi children. What happened? Ringworm (Tinea capitis) was a highly contagious fungal infection. From the 1920s through to the 1950s, X-ray radiation was considered the only effective treatment in the USA, France, Canada and Israel. The fact that this led to cancer in some patients decades later was a dramatic long-term medical consequence – and not intentional. Sheldon turns a global medical error into a Zionist crime.
Joss Sheldon is not concerned with the Mizrahim. He has no interest in their culture, their history of suffering or their integration into Israeli society. For him, the Mizrahim are merely pawns in an anti-Semitic game.
He misappropriates the very real wounds and debates within Israeli society in order to morally delegitimise the Jewish state’s right to exist. By excusing the expulsion from the Arab world and portraying the rescue to Israel as a crime, he carries out the final distortion: The persecutors are exonerated, and the place of refuge is declared a prison.
Anyone who engages in such historical falsification is not practising journalism or history. They are engaging in classic propaganda. And that is precisely why we will not let him get away with it.
Part 5: The Myth of the ‘Bought’ President – How Joss Sheldon Distorts the Founding of Israel and the Truman Era
CHAPTER SIX
Israel was well-established. It had a Jewish majority. But it was surrounded by hostile forces. It needed international support. And it got it from the USA – from President Truman (who believed
„Jews were “very selfish”), and Richard Nixon (who called us “obnoxious”). That special relationship has been worth hundreds-of-billions of dollars. But it was built on malign foundations: President Reagan admitted that he only supported Israel for “strategic” reasons. President Biden only backed the Zionist State because it helped “to protect America’s interests in the region”. Those schmucks were treating Israeli Jews as though they were nothing more than political pawns, expecting them to kill and be killed in the service of American “interests”. That’s seriously antisemitic.“
Auszug aus: Sheldon, Joss. „The ZIONISTS who HATE JEWS.“ Apple Books. Dieses Material ist möglicherweise urheberrechtlich geschützt.
Having rewritten the expulsion of the Oriental Jews as a Zionist conspiracy in the previous chapters, Joss Sheldon turns his attention to the international stage in Chapter 6. His central question is: How did the young State of Israel manage to secure the geopolitical support of the superpower, the USA?
Sheldon’s answer is as simplistic as it is classically anti-Semitic: through manipulation, financial pressure and a corrupting lobby.
To support this thesis, he once again resorts to his tried-and-tested method: he takes historical quotations from Harry S. Truman out of context, glosses over the dramatic power struggles within the US administration, and transforms one of the most complex diplomatic decisions of the 20th century into a cheap conspiracy narrative.
Let us dismantle Sheldon’s nonsense in the light of the historical facts.
1. The Truman quote and the art of cherry-picking
Sheldon opens his chapter on the USA with a deliberate provocation:
“And it got it from the USA – from President Truman (who believed Jews were ‘very selfish’) […]”
Sheldon’s quotation trick: Here, Sheldon quotes a private entry from Truman’s diary dated 21 July 1947. He pretends that this half-sentence was the quintessence of Truman’s attitude towards the Jewish people and the key to his foreign policy.
The historical context: Truman was a man from the American South, whose language was often shaped by the prejudices of his time. However, in the same diary and in numerous letters, he simultaneously expressed deep horror at the Holocaust and was profoundly outraged by the indifference of the European powers towards the survivors in the DP camps.
The distortion: Sheldon does not use the quote to analyse Truman’s complex, often contradictory personality, but to make an anti-Semitic point: Even Truman didn’t like them, but they forced him to.
To give you an overview what exactly happend:
The dilemma between words and deeds
A clear contradiction: Historians emphasise the stark contrast between Truman’s private frustration and his political legacy. Despite these harsh words, Truman officially recognised the State of Israel in 1948, just eleven minutes after its establishment.
Pragmatism over emotion: Scholars often interpret the entry as evidence that Truman was able to set aside personal grievances when it came to geopolitical decisions and humanitarian aid.
Contextualising anti-Semitism
A product of his time and background: Many biographers (such as Alonzo Hamby) attribute the remarks to Truman’s rural upbringing in Missouri. Such prejudices were widespread in mid-20th-century America amongst his social class.
Political pressure: The entry was written at the height of the conflict over Jewish refugees following the Holocaust. Historians see the text as an outlet for an overburdened president who was under immense pressure from lobby groups and political advisers.
Psychological relief (letting off steam)
The diary as an outlet: Truman’s biographers point out that he often used his diary to vent unfiltered anger and frustration at political opponents, allies and ethnic groups. The entries often reflect a momentary emotional reaction rather than a lasting philosophical conviction.
2. The myth of the all-powerful ‘Zionist lobby’
According to Sheldon’s logic, there was only one reason why the US de facto recognised the State of Israel in 1948 within 11 minutes of its declaration of independence: pressure from Zionist donors and voters.
In doing so, Sheldon is playing straight into the classic anti-Semitic stereotype of Jewish power behind the scenes, which controls US presidents like puppets.
What the White House and State Department files (1947–1948) actually reveal:
Marshall argued that recognition would jeopardise relations with the Arab oil-producing states and draw the Soviet Union into the region.
In a legendary meeting on 12 May 1948, Marshall even threatened Truman that he would vote against him in the next election should he recognise Israel.
Truman’s actual motives: Truman decided to recognise Israel for two main reasons:
Humanitarian conviction: Truman was deeply shaken by the plight of the 250,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors who were stranded in European DP camps because neither Britain nor the US was willing to take them in. He saw the Jewish state as the only practical solution to this catastrophe.
Reality under international law: Truman recognised that the UN General Assembly had laid the legal foundation with Resolution 181 (the Partition Plan) on 29 November 1947, and that the British Mandate had irrevocably ended on 14 May 1948.
The facts: Had the Zionist lobby been as all-powerful as Sheldon suggests, it would not have had to fight for every millimetre of ground against the united front of the US State Department, the Pentagon and the intelligence services.
3. The omission of geopolitical dynamics (the Cold War)
In his account, Sheldon completely overlooks the fact that by 1948 the Cold War was already in full swing.
The role of the Soviet Union: It was not only Truman who recognised Israel – the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was the first major power to recognise Israel de jure on 17 May 1948. Stalin hoped that the socialist-leaning Yishuv would drive a wedge into British influence in the Middle East. Furthermore, the weapons crucial to Israel’s survival in the War of Independence came from Czechoslovakia – with Moscow’s express permission.
Sheldon’s blind spot: Because the fact that the Soviet Union provided massive support for Israel’s founding does not fit at all into Sheldon’s narrative of the ‘US imperialist conspiracy’, this central historical fact is simply glossed over in his book.
Conclusion: Reducing history to prejudice
Joss Sheldon’s Chapter 6 is a textbook example of how ideologues write history. Complex geopolitical decisions, the struggle over the post-war order, humanitarian crises and the diplomatic power struggle at the onset of the Cold War are reduced to a single anti-Semitic formula: money, puppet-masters and manipulation.
By narrowing Truman’s historic decision down to the influence of alleged Zionist puppet-masters, Sheldon not only undermines US diplomacy but also once again peddles the oldest narrative of anti-Semites: that world politics is steered from the shadows by Jewish powers.
Why Joss Sheldon’s „The ZIONISTS who HATE JEWS“ is Propaganda, Not History
Across this five-part series on De Republica, we have systematically cross-examined the claims, citations, and historical narratives presented in Joss Sheldon’s The ZIONISTS who HATE JEWS against primary diplomatic sources, legal statutes, and archival records.
What presents itself as a provocative historical re-examination is, in reality, a classic exercise in ideological revisionism. Sheldon does not offer new historical insights; he recycles age-old antisemitic tropes, repackaging them for a modern audience under the guise of „anti-Zionist critique.“
The Three Pillars of Sheldon’s Deception
Our analysis reveals that Sheldon’s entire book relies on three core manipulative techniques:
1. The „Citation Roundabout“
Sheldon overwhelms the casual reader with hundreds of footnotes to simulate scholarly rigor. However, an audit of these citations reveals a closed ideological ecosystem:
He rarely, if ever, consults primary sources (such as the 1950/51 Iraqi Denaturalization Acts, British Foreign Office files, or UN resolutions).
Instead, he quotes secondary and tertiary sources that quote each other in an infinite loop of distorted claims, relying on selective clipping and out-of-context quotes.
2. Victim-Perpetrator Reversal
Throughout the text, actual historical aggressors are systematically absolved of responsibility, while the victims and rescuers are recast as the primary villains:
The Victims: Mizrahi refugees and Holocaust survivors are denied agency; their escape to Israel is framed not as a desperate flight for survival, but as a sinister plot orchestrated by Zionist agents to „liquidate the Diaspora.“
3. Weaponizing Real History & Medical Errors
Sheldon takes genuine, painful episodes of Israeli domestic history—such as the harsh conditions of the Ma’abarot(transit camps), the Ringworm Affair (Tinea capitis radiation treatments), and the Yemenite Children Affair—and strips them of all historical context:
Joss Sheldon’s book does not fight hate—it breeds it. By trivializing the atrocities committed against Middle Eastern Jewish communities, whitewashing authoritarian regimes, and attributing all regional conflict to a singular, demonized entity, he engages in textbook historical distortion.
History requires nuance, archival honesty, and an unwavering commitment to primary evidence. The ZIONISTS who HATE JEWS offers none of these. It stands as a cautionary example of how easily historical trauma can be weaponized when readers fail to check the footnotes.
Editor’s Note (De Republica): This concludes our critical series dissecting historical revisionism in contemporary literature. All primary sources, diplomatic cables (FO 371), and legal statutes referenced in this series are archived and accessible via our reference section.
Jews left the Country
The Myth of the „Insider“: Deconstructing a Fabricated Identity
Throughout his writings and promotional material, Joss Sheldon repeatedly relies on a singular argument to claim authority over Jewish history and culture: his own alleged background. He claims to have grown up in an unspecified London suburb and attended a Cheder (traditional Jewish elementary school), presenting this as proof of his unchallengeable expertise.
However, a basic examination of his biographical claims and the socio-cultural landscape of London’s Jewish community causes this narrative to collapse:
The Linguistic and Cultural Blind Spots: As demonstrated throughout his books, Sheldon repeatedly stumbles over fundamental concepts of Jewish tradition, religious terminology, and cultural nuance (such as misinterpreting basic Yiddish/Hebrew expressions like Goy or displaying zero familiarity with basic liturgical and educational structures). Someone who actually underwent traditional Cheder education would not exhibit such elementary gaps in baseline knowledge.
The Onomastic Reality: While surnames can change through assimilation or immigration, „Sheldon“ is an English toponymic surname of Anglo-Saxon origin. While Jewish immigrants in the UK occasionally anglicized their names, Hasidic or traditional Orthodox families—the very communities that maintain rigorous Cheder schooling—strictly preserved their traditional surnames and cultural heritage.
The Function of the „As-A-Jew“ Shield
Why does this matter? Because in contemporary political discourse, this tactic is known as identity shielding:
Authority by Assertion: Instead of earning credibility through rigorous archival research or peer-reviewed scholarship, the author claims inherent authority based on a vague personal identity.
Pre-emptive Immunization: By framing himself as a Jewish insider „exposing the truth,“ he attempts to insulate himself against accusations of antisemitism. Anyone who criticizes his historical errors or revisionist claims is immediately accused of attacking a „whistleblower.“
Ultimately, whether his biographical claims are a complete fabrication or an exercise in extreme self-stylization, the outcome remains the same: An unverified identity does not validate verified historical falsehoods.
In a previous post, I reviewed a pseudoscientific pamphlet by a certain Joss Sheldon. Sheldon, who claims to be Jewish himself but demonstrates right from the introduction that he doesn’t possess the slightest inkling of actual Jewish history or tradition, unleashes a textbook display of conspiratorial antisemitism. He gleefully rips quotes by historical figures out of context and garnishes them with standard antisemitic tropes. If this book were just being handed out for free to a few internet contrarians, one could ignore it. However, he is self-publishing this work on global platforms like Amazon and Kobo. And this brings us to the core issue: the sheer ignorance spreading through the comment sections is staggering. One reviewer even demands that this book be urgently added to high school curriculums—because, of course, antisemitism doesn’t exist. Sheldon’s book acts as an accelerant, functioning entirely on the premise of „Everything you always wanted to know about Zionists, but were afraid to ask.“
Sheldon paints Zionism as the root of all global evil and openly daydreams on X (formerly Twitter) about Israel being wiped off the map. He is likely already looking forward to his book being translated into Arabic. But let’s look back at the Amazon reviews. The dynamics within these comment sections reveal a disturbing, three-step system of manipulation that preys on an audience devoid of foundational knowledge:
1️⃣ The Illusion of Rigor („Footnote-Formatting“): Many readers leave 5-star reviews because they believe the book is „meticulously researched“ due to the sheer volume of historical quotes. What they fail to grasp is that they completely lack the tools of source criticism (Quellenkritik). They are blinded by the mere appearance of academic seriousness. When a charlatan rips historical quotes (from Herzl to Jabotinsky) entirely out of their temporal context and tosses them into a blender with statements from actual antisemites or Christian fundamentalists, an untrained eye won’t notice the deception. Where no historical foundation exists, any lie can take root.
Tell me about my oppression then.
Tell me about the ghetto I live in.
I'd be more oppressed if I lived in Israel. That place denies Jews our right to self-determination.
2️⃣ The „Politeness Rating“ of Intellectual Cowardice: The allegedly moderate voices are even more absurd. Reviewers write things like: „I don’t personally agree with the author’s views and I don’t know much about Jewish history, but I’m giving it 4 stars because he put a lot of effort into this difficult topic and it made me think.“ This is intellectual laziness masquerading as tolerance. You do not award stars for „effort“ to a commercially driven piece of historical revisionism and victim-blaming.
3️⃣ Confirmation Bias on Steroids: The most frightening aspect is that a large portion of this audience has no desire to think critically. They approach the book with a deep-seated, emotional prejudice against Zionism. They aren’t looking for historical truth—they are merely looking for ammunition to validate their pre-existing biases. When someone comes along and provides a pseudo-scientific veneer for their animosity, they cheer.
The Verdict: Books like this, and the uncritical masses celebrating them, pose a genuine danger. They infect historically illiterate people with a deep, pseudo-intellectual antisemitism, which these readers then proudly parade around as an „expanded horizon.“ If we lose the ability to dissect texts, verify contexts, and distinguish raw polemic from serious scholarship, we hand the field over to demagogues and charlatans without a fight. Media literacy begins when you stop believing everything just because it fits your worldview.
To promote his book, Sheldon is not ashamed to proudly display his ignorance to the public. Let’s look at the real context behind the historical quotes he weaponizes:
The self proclaimed Genius himself – source Wikipedia
1. Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau: The Critique of Assimilation
Herzl and Nordau wrote at a time when the formal emancipation of Jews in Europe (particularly in Germany and Austria-Hungary) had functionally failed. Despite legal equality, they faced brutal societal antisemitism—culminating in the Dreyfus Affair in France, which famously convinced Herzl that a Jewish state was necessary.
The Context: Herzl and Nordau were not criticizing „Jews“ as an ethnicity; they were criticizing the psychological state of forced assimilation. They looked with contempt upon wealthy, assimilated Jews who bent over backward, ignored rampant antisemitism, bribed blackmailing journalists, and kept their heads down just to appease a hostile majority.
Nordau’s Concept of the „Muscle Jew“: Nordau intended the exact opposite of what Sheldon implies. He diagnosed an „inner crippling“ and psychological insecurity caused by centuries of ghettoization and persecution. His answer was a call to create a self-confident, resilient, and proud „Muscle Jew“ (Muskeljude) who would no longer hide or feel ashamed of his identity.
2. Leon Pinsker: „Auto-Emancipation“ (1882)
Pinsker’s seminal text Auto-Emancipation! was written under the immediate, horrific impression of the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire starting in 1881.
The Context: When Pinsker describes the Jewish people as a „ghostlike apparition of a living corpse“ or as „the stranger par excellence,“ this is not antisemitism. It is a brutal, clinical sociological analysis of the Jewish plight in the Diaspora.
The Message: Pinsker argued that the nations of Europe would never truly accept Jews as equals because Jews lacked the traditional attributes of a nation—namely, their own land and a unified organization. To antisemites, stateless Jews were an uncanny, spectral phenomenon. Pinsker’s conclusion was not self-hatred, but a rallying cry: „We must help ourselves! We must establish our own territory to end this unnatural existence as eternal strangers.“
3. Aharon David Gordon: The Philosophy of Labor
Gordon was a Jewish mystic and the intellectual pioneer of early Zionist agrarian socialism—the movement that eventually gave rise to the Kibbutzim.
The Context: When Gordon uses the word „parasitic,“ he is employing a common term from 19th-century socialist theory (even the European labor movement routinely labeled the bourgeoisie as „parasites“). He was criticizing the fact that centuries of European bans on professions had severed Jews from a direct connection to nature and physical labor (like agriculture), forcing them primarily into commerce and finance.
The Message: Gordon wanted to „heal“ the Jewish people by returning them to the soil. His philosophy was the „sanctity of labor.“ He wanted Jews to build their own roots, grow their own food, and create a culture out of their own labor, rather than merely adapting to the trends of host nations. It was a call for existential renewal.
The Anatomy of the Distortion
Joss Sheldon uses these quotes to suggest: „Look, they thought exactly like the antisemites!“ This is akin to accusing a doctor who delivers a life-threatening cancer diagnosis of „hating the patient“ because their description of the disease is graphic and grim. Herzl, Nordau, Pinsker, and Gordon exposed the psychological and social scars left by centuries of European persecution. They did so not to degrade Jews, but to hold up a mirror and say: „Stand up, stop begging, stop subverting your identity—become a free, self-determined people in your own land.“
An audience that views Zionism as a carbon copy of the KKK or Nazism will naturally swallow Sheldon’s framing because they cannot intellectually differentiate between a painful therapeutic diagnosis and an existential intent to destroy.
Breaking Down the „Masterclass“ of Deception
When read sequentially and without context, the rest of the quotes Sheldon stitches together look like a cohesive manifest of horror. However, he is mixing entirely different categories of statements to deceive his audience:
Category 1: Radical Self-Critique (Ze’ev Jabotinsky): Much like Herzl, Jabotinsky deliberately used the Yiddish term „Yid“ to describe the traumatized, fearful ghetto-Jew of Eastern Europe who cowers from antisemitism. Jabotinsky’s life’s work was building Jewish self-defense units (the Betar youth). He wanted to end defenselessness. He described the grim reality of persecution to ignite a will for self-assertion. It was not contempt for his people, but contempt for their subjugation.
Category 2: Colonial Arrogance and Intra-Jewish Prejudice (Balfour, Ben-Gurion, Gelblum): Arthur Balfour was a British imperialist; his support for the Balfour Declaration was rooted in geopolitics and a patrician desire to export the „Jewish problem“ from Europe. It had nothing to do with Zionist ideology. Meanwhile, Ben-Gurion and Aryeh Gelblum reflect the Eurocentric (Ashkenazi) prejudices of early Israel’s elite toward Mizrahi and Yemenite immigrants in the 1940s and 50s. This intra-Jewish cultural friction is a real, heavily scrutinized dark spot in Israeli social history—but Sheldon distorts it into „Zionist Jew-hatred.“
Category 3: Exploitative Alliances and Extremist Theology (Heydrich, Hagee, Kirk): This is Sheldon’s most sinister trick—guilt by association. In 1935, the Nazi regime used tactical, temporary alignment (like the Haavara Agreement) to pressure Jews into emigrating. Implying that Zionists were in „complete agreement“ with the architects of the Holocaust is a vile distortion; Zionists were desperately trying to salvage Jewish lives and assets. Modern figures like John Hagee or Charlie Kirk are American Evangelical Christians operating on a fundamentalist end-time theology (Dispensationalism). They back Israel because their own dogma dictates that a Jewish return triggers the Apocalypse. It is an inherently anti-Jewish theology, yet Sheldon blames Zionism for the antisemitism of American televangelists.
Category 4: Internal Cultural Wars (Weisz, Gutman, Betar, Sharansky, Lieberman): Here, Sheldon weaponizes heated, internal Israeli political debates. When TV host Galit Gutman rails against the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox), she is voicing secular anger over military exemptions and state subsidies—it is a domestic civic dispute, not „Jew-hatred.“ When Sharansky speaks of „Un-Jews,“ he is engaged in a fierce ideological battle against Jewish anti-Zionists who align with Israel’s adversaries. Every nation and religion has these intense internal schisms.
Joss Sheldon is running the exact same playbook that conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones or David Icke have used for decades: take the internal contradictions, the historic traumas, and the complex political conflicts of a deeply persecuted, fragmented people, and slap a grand, paranoid label on it: „See? They hate themselves.“
He blends the imperial calculations of Balfour, the propaganda of Heydrich, the apocalyptic mania of John Hagee, and domestic Israeli budget battles into one demonic caricature. That his audience devours it is the direct result of a modern tragedy: due to a systemic failure of historical education, these readers can no longer tell the difference between a perpetrator (Heydrich), an opportunistic end-time preacher (Hagee), a secular Israeli in a culture war (Gutman), and a desperate 19th-century Jewish intellectual trying to save his people (Jabotinsky).
Actually, when I hear that name, I think of the hero of my childhood, Donald Duck, and not a narcissistic, megalomaniacal egomaniac.
Even your first term in office was a nightmare and showed that you have absolutely no understanding of how geopolitics works. No wonder that your greatest ‘strengths’ before that were your bankruptcies and that you had to sell off the family silver to save your reputation.
Whilst during your first term in office you still had serious advisers who protected not you, but the world from you, you have now surrounded yourself with a bunch of Muppets. They may not understand how politics works either, but they are loyally devoted to you. Your lapdog is let off the leash whenever you want to give the impression of being a level-headed statesman. That then gives you the chance to backtrack and parade your lapdog as a completely moronic redneck, whilst assuring the world that, deep down, it was all just a bit of fun and that none of it was meant seriously.
You’re ploughing through your second term like a wrecking ball, and it doesn’t bother you that whatever you touch is reduced to tatters. You don’t understand that you’re supposed to trust your partners; you throw them under the bus just to stroke your pathetic ego. Whether in Afghanistan, where you betrayed the Afghans – they probably showed you cartoons in the White House so you’d have some idea of what Afghanistan is like. Belittling a head of state who, along with his country, is fighting for sheer survival. You couldn’t care less; on the contrary, like a protection racketeer, you try to sweet-talk him into paying protection money and force him to hand his country over to the aggressor, if you please. For a commission in your favour, of course. You make grandiose promises of freedom to the people of Iran, then throw them under the bus, because you don’t give a shit about human rights; you don’t even know what they are and believe that rights apply only to you.
You lead your partners, like Netanyahu, by the nose through the circus ring, and your usual game is to leave them out in the cold in the end. And if they’re unlucky, you threaten them. All your drivel about Jews is pure PR; deep down, you couldn’t care less about the fate of the Jews and you’re just using Israel as a cynical bargaining chip and a PR backdrop for your evangelical electorate. So you throw Israel a few crumbs, give the Israeli government a slap on the wrist whenever you feel they might be taking money from your petty cash, and watch with satisfaction as others, thanks to your idiocy, have to fight for their survival.
Yet you’re nothing more than a windbag – albeit one with a nuclear briefcase in your hand. You store classified documents in the loo at Mar-a-Lago, and your justifications for why you have them sound like those of a state-certified lunatic. And the worst part is, people have to take you seriously because you’re completely unpredictable.
Your tariff policy proves this: when you look at your tariff board, which you slide up and down every minute like a Wall Street broker, whether you’re harming the American people is of just as little interest to you as a rock flying through the air on Mars; as far as you’re concerned, the United States consists of the Donald Trump family and Trump Tower – nothing else. If you were in dire straits, you’d sell your own family to the highest bidder, regardless of the consequences. The main thing is that your property remains untouched.
And this is precisely where the truly alarming question arises for your voters: how can people in the year 2026 still fall for such a crude charlatan? How can a supposedly enlightened electorate follow a man who is smashing the constitution and the institutions of the world’s oldest democracy to smithereens like a cheap wrecking ball?
Anyone who wants to understand you need not read political analyses, but should instead take a look at the classics of mass manipulation. Over 130 years ago, in his ‘The Psychology of the Masses’, Gustave Le Bon described how the masses never thirst for truth, but love illusion above all else. Whoever is able to supply them with the most outrageous illusions will easily become their master. You are living proof of this theory. You employ precisely the methods that Edward Bernays, in his ‘Propaganda’, defined as the deliberate and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses.
Your voters believe they are voting for the freedom and greatness of America, whilst in reality they are merely extras in a gigantic PR show staged by Bernays’ heirs for a deeply disturbed ego. No rational person would trust a snake-oil salesman who betrays partners, throws allies under the bus and jeopardises global security for a personal commission. They are voting for their own downfall, as long as the spectacle is loud enough.
Als ich noch in Deutschland einen Blog betrieb, gehörte ich einem Netzwerk Pro-Amerikanischer und Pro-Israelischer Blogger an. “De oppresso Liber” war mein Motto, wir haben über den Nahen und Mittleren Osten geschrieben, Dinge, die in deutschen Medien verbreitet wurden gerade gerückt und über die Situation berichtet. Antisemitismus und Antiisrael Hass, getarnt als Israelkritik, war schon damals sehr hoch und wie Heute wurden schon damals von Völkermord und Apartheid geredet.
Man startete die Initiative “Eine Tasse Blut für die Bundeskanzlerin,” die wie Wolfgang Pohrt 1982 in einem Essay schrieb, “dass der mustergültig geplante und exekutierte Massenmord an den Juden viele Deutsche offensichtlich innerlich dazu verpflichte, »Israel mit Lob und Tadel moralisch beizustehen, damit das Opfer nicht rückfällig werde«, sprich, Deutsche müssen stets achtsam sein, dass Israel nicht selbst zum »Täter« werde.” Diese Leute konnten es nicht ertragen, dass die Juden sich nicht mehr wie die Schafe zur Schlachtbank führen ließen oder wie Broder in der Jüdischen Allgemeinen schrieb, “Es stimmt, Israel ist heute mehr Täter als Opfer. Das ist auch gut und richtig so, nachdem es die Juden fast 2000 Jahre lang mit der Rolle der ewigen Opfer versucht und dabei nur schlechte Erfahrungen gemacht haben. Täter haben meistens eine längere Lebenserwartung als Opfer und es macht mehr Spaß, Täter als Opfer zu sein.”
Wir haben uns zwar bei einem Bloggertreffen über diese Leute lustig gemacht, die Hartnäckig dieser Leute allerdings unterschätzt, das ging soweit, dass ich einen Rechtsanwalt beauftragen musste, weil einer dieser Antisemiten meinen Klarnamen und meine Adresse rausbekam und vor meinem Haus, in dem ich wohnte, plötzlich auffallend viele Araber auftauchten. Ich habe dann, um es ihnen einfacher zu machen, meine Israel-Fahne in’s Fenster gehängt, damit sie nicht lange suchen mussten. Funfact: Die Antifa verewigte sich auf dem Nachbargebäude. Es herrschte dann Ruhe, bis ein neuer Akteur die Bühne betrat, ein mit sich selbst unzufriedener Rentner aus Brandenburg, der es sich zur Aufgabe machte, einem nach dem anderen nachzujagen.
Alan Posener bezeichnete ihn als veritablen Antisemiten, der es nicht ertragen kann, wenn Juden nicht kuschen und sich stattdessen wehren. Mit der Akribie eines Trüffelschweins setzte er alles daran soviel wie möglich über uns herauszufinden und stellte seine eigenen Verschwörungstheorien auf und behauptete, dass Henryk M. Broder sämtliche Artikel auf der Achse des Guten selber schreiben würde. Wie ein Blockwart legte er über uns Dossiers an und glaubte, dass alle unter Pseudonym bloggen würden. Einen Blogger hatte er dabei besonders im Visier und es verging kaum ein Tag an dem dieser Mensch sich mit Emails und in Kommentaren versuchte Gehör zu verschaffen und die Leute zu zermürben. Sein Pseudointellektuelles Gehabe bekam schnell Risse und er ließ die Maske des Biedermannes fallen und beschimpfte die Leute im Jargon eines Gassenjungen. Man zog ihm den Stecker und da er das nicht ertragen konnte, denn Antisemiten sehen sich grundsätzlich im Recht, bloggte er selbst und versuchte sich über die Leute lustig zu machen. Vor allem hatte er keine Ahnung von deutschem Recht und zeigte, sollten sich die Macher der Blogs über ihn lustig machen, wegen Beleidigung an. Irgendwann wurde es ruhig um ihn.
Hier hat es ein paar Jahre gedauert, bis eine Lightversion sich auf meinen Blog verirrt hat. Auffällig ist, dass er nur an Content über den Nahen Osten interessiert ist und akribisch, wie diese Leute sind, mit einer Honigsüßen Freundlichkeit kommentierte. Anfänglich fand ich ihn putzig, er schrieb von Wissenschaft und Völkerrecht, ohne auf den Content einzugehen. Ich habe ihn ein paar Mal aufgefordert, meine Sicht der Dinge zu widerlegen, aber Fehlanzeige. In einem pseudointellektuellen Geschwafel klammerte er sich an seine Worthülsen, und weigerte sich im Prinzip die Fakten vor Ort anzuerkennen, weil diese Leute an Fakten gar nicht interessiert sind. Sie stören sich an der Tatsache, dass es jemand wagt, den Nahen Osten zu analysieren. Für sie sind die Palästinenser grundsätzlich die Opfer. In rassistischer und postkolonialer Vorstellung sprechen sie diesen Leuten ab, dass sie für ihre Taten selbst verantwortlich sind.
Irgendwann reichte es mir, wer außer sich in einer Wohlfühl Blase moralisch erhaben zu fühlen, ansonsten nichts zur Diskussion beizutragen hat, kickt sich irgendwann selbst in’s Aus. Zumal der Mann auch kein wie auch immer gearteter Akademiker, sondern ein Maschinenzeichner war, der glaubte, er müsse jetzt die intellektuelle Weltbühne betreten. Als er anfing meinen Content zu klauen und ihn auf seinem Blog verwurstete, weil er es nicht ertragen konnte, dass man ihm die Tür weist, reichte es mir und ich wies ihn daraufhin sowohl meinen Content auf seinem Blog zu löschen, und mich nicht mehr zu belästigen. Diese Leute können es nicht ertragen, wenn man ihnen die Aufmerksamkeit entzieht, also hinterließ er einen Kommentar, weil diese Leute so von sich überzeugt sind und glauben, sie hätten ein Recht anderen vorzuschreiben, wie sie zu denken haben.
Fazit: Wer nicht in der Lage ist aufzuzeigen wo ich Fehler gemacht habe, der sollte nicht kommentieren. Ich mag Feedback, aber ich mag nicht wenn man vermeintlich glaubt, mich von oben herab mit Worthülsen angreifen zu können. Die Kommentare werden sofort gelöscht, mir reicht es.
Wenn mich jemand fragen würde, ob der Nahostkonflikt gelöst werden könnte, würde ich das verneinen. Der Nahostkonflikt ist komplexer und vielschichtiger, als sich das die Leute im Westen vorstellen. Geht man zurück in die Mandatszeit, dann hat die Mandatsmacht Großbritannien die Grundlagen für den heutigen Konflikt gelegt – nicht weil man den Zionismus oder die Juden bevorzugt hätte, sondern weil man versucht hat, die Araber nicht zu verärgern, und ihnen gegenüber eine Appeasement-Politik an den Tag legte.
Die Gegend war immer von Juden bewohnt. Es gab zu allen Zeiten eine Rückwanderung der Juden in die Levante; eine große fand statt während der Reconquista, als Juden von der iberischen Halbinsel nicht nur in nordafrikanische Länder, Europa (Irland) und andere islamische Länder flohen, sondern auch in die Levante. In Jerusalem war die Mehrheit stets jüdisch. Das Land unter den Osmanen an sich war eine trostlose Wüsten- und Sumpflandschaft, kaum bewirtschaftet, mit trostlosen Weilern durchzogen. Man lebte von der Tierzucht, betrieb hier und da etwas Landwirtschaft durch die aus Ägypten stammenden Fellachen und die Beduinen, die mit ihren Herden durch das Land zogen. Die Osmanen hatten auch nicht die besondere Absicht, das zu ändern – wozu auch. Jerusalem war das Zentrum, aber nicht wichtig genug, als dass man, wie im frühen Mittelalter, Jerusalem zu einem religiösen Zentrum ausgebaut hätte. Unter dem Umayyaden-Kalifen Al-Walid I. wurde die Al-Aqsa-Moschee zwischen 706 und 715 fertiggestellt. Sein Vorgänger, Abū l-Walīd ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān, hatte den ersten Bau 692 abgeschlossen. Der Grund, warum Jerusalem zur Pilgerstätte wurde, war jedoch nicht religiös begründet, sondern hatte profane, weltliche und machtpolitische Gründe. ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair war zu der Zeit Gegenkalif und herrschte über Mekka; er bekämpfte nicht nur die Umayyaden, er hatte mit den Pilgerreisen nach Mekka ein einträgliches Geschäft. Der Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher schrieb dazu in seinen Muhammedanische Studien (1889–1890) unter Berufung auf arabische Historiker Folgendes: „Als der ummejjadische Chalife ‚Abdalmalik aus Besorgnis darüber, dass sein in Mekka herrschender Rivale ʿAbdallāh b. Zubejr die nach den heiligen Stätten im Ḥigāz pilgernden Syrer zwingen könnte, ihm den Huldigungseid zu leisten, die Wallfahrt nach Mekka hintanhalten wollte, da griff er zu dem Auskunftsmittel der Lehre vom stellvertretenden Hagg zur Kubbat al-sachra in Jerusalem.” Und Werner Caskel ergänzte später, dass die ersten Umayyadenkalifen bestrebt gewesen seien, in Syrien-Palästina ein religiös-geistiges Zentrum zu errichten. Diese Forschungshypothesen scheinen die nunmehr im Druck vorliegenden Werke islamischer Lokalhistoriker über die Vorzüge Jerusalems in mancher Hinsicht zu bestätigen; der Felsen, unter dem Flüsse des Paradieses fließen, ist der Ort, der dem Himmel am nächsten liegt. Abd al-Malik hatte damit die Möglichkeit geschaffen, Pilgerreisen nach Jerusalem anzubieten, indem er Jerusalem zur heiligen Stätte erklärte, obwohl die Stadt im Koran nicht erwähnt wird und es reine Auslegungssache ist, wie man die Suren interpretiert.
Die akademische Propaganda: Das Haschemitische „White Paper“ unter der Lupe Niemand im Westen fragt sich je, warum Verträge mit Ägypten und Jordanien möglich waren, aber nicht mit Arafat und Abbas. Es geht nämlich nicht um Grenzen; es geht schlicht und ergreifend um die Ummah und die Juden. Die Palästinenser haben keine historisch gewachsene Geschichte, die einen exklusiven Anspruch auf das Gebiet rechtfertigen würde. Die Mehrheit von ihnen kam genauso in das Land wie die Juden. Es gab islamische, christliche und jüdische Bewohner des Landstriches, andere kamen hinzu. Juden und Christen waren die einzigen, die schon zu Zeiten der Römer und Byzantiner dort lebten – die Juden noch länger. Viele sind im Zuge der islamischen Eroberung konvertiert. Im Laufe der Jahrhunderte kamen und gingen viele, besonders in der Zeit der Osmanen, für die Palästina nur ein Verwaltungsbezirk war, der nicht mal einen eigenen Namen hatte (der Norden wurde von Damaskus verwaltet, der Süden von Eilat). Die ersten jüdischen Einwanderer um 1880 fanden dort keine Früchte oder blühende Landschaften vor. Das Land was von Moskitos verseucht, fruchtbare Felder mussten dem Sumpf abgetrotzt und die Wüste sprichwörtlich urbar gemacht werden. Dass heute dennoch eine fixe Idee einer „5.000-jährigen arabischen Kontinuität“ existiert, liegt an Papieren wie dem des Königlichen Aal Al-Bayt-Instituts für islamisches Gedankengut. Dieses „White Paper“ strotzt vor Revisionismus, um die jüdische Identität der Region akademisch auszulöschen.
Das linguistische Paradoxon: Die Erfindung der „Bronzezeit-Araber“ Das Papier behauptet, dass die Kanaaniter und Jebusiter eigentlich Araber gewesen seien („Consequently, Jerusalem was always an Arab city“). ● Die wissenschaftliche Realität: Das ist ein anachronistischer Humbug. Die Kanaaniter und Jebusiter waren nordwestsemitische Völker der Bronzezeit. Die Araber hingegen tauchen als historisch greifbare Gruppe (als südsemitische Stammeskonföderation) das allererste Mal im 9. Jahrhundert v. Chr. in neuassyrischen Inschriften auf (Schlacht von Qarqar, 853 v. Chr., Erwähnung von „Gindibu der Araber“). Kanaaniter der Spätbronzezeit (ca. 1400 v. Chr.) zu „Arabern“ zu erklären, ist historisch so seriös, wie die Kelten zu „Franzosen der Grande Armée“ zu machen. Es gab damals schlichtweg noch keine arabische Ethnogenese im Raum Palästina.
Das Eigentor mit der Amarna-Korrespondenz Das Dokument zitiert die Briefe des Königs Abdi-Heba von Jerusalem aus dem 14. Jahrhundert v. Chr. als Beweis für die „arabische“ Urheberschaft. ● Die wissenschaftliche Realität: Abdi-Heba ist ein bekannter kanaanitischer Herrscher, dessen Name ein unmissverständliches theofores (göttertragendes) Element enthält: Abdi-Heba bedeutet „Diener der Heba“. Heba (oder Hepat) war eine hurritische Muttergöttin. Der König von Jerusalem war also sprachlich und religiös mit den Hurritern und Kanaanitern verknüpft – Kulturen, die mit der altarabischen Halbinsel absolut nichts zu tun hatten.
Das theologische Zirkelschluss-Verfahren Das Papier nutzt die hebräische Bibel (Altes Testament) als historische Quelle, um zu beweisen, dass die Jebusiter zuerst da waren (Buch der Richter, Josua 15,63). Im selben Atemzug unterschlägt das Dokument jedoch komplett das Kernnarrativ derselben Bücher: dass nämlich genau dieser Gott das Land den Nachkommen Abrahams, Isaaks und Jakobs versprochen hat. Man pickt sich Verse heraus, die den kanaanitischen Ursprung beschreiben (den in Israel niemand bestreitet – die Bibel selbst nennt Jerusalem vor David explizit „Jebus“), nutzt sie für das eigene politische Narrativ, erklärt die Bibel aber ansonsten für gefälscht, sobald es um die jüdische Präsenz geht. Zudem bezeugt das zitierte Josua-Buch („die Jebusiter wohnen mit den Söhnen Judas in Jerusalem bis zum heutigen Tag“) eine jüdische Kontinuität in der Stadt ab ca. 1000 v. Chr., was die jordanische These von der „exklusiv arabischen Stadt“ mitten im eigenen Zitat widerlegt.
Das manipulative Zitat aus Hesekiel 16:3 Das Papier zitiert Gott, der zu Jerusalem spricht: „Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite“. Daraus folgert das Papier: „Consequently, Jerusalem was always an Arab city“. ● Die literarische Realität: In Hesekiel 16 handelt es sich um eine prophetische Schmährede und Metapher. Gott wirft den Bewohnern Jerusalems vor, dass sie sich durch ihren Götzendienst genau so benehmen wie die heidnischen Kanaaniter und Amoriter vor ihnen. Es ist eine moralische Rüge, keine genealogische Geburtsurkunde. Und selbst in dieser Metapher taucht das Wort „Araber“ mit keinem einzigen Buchstaben auf.
Die biologische Kontinitäts-Lüge („Stamm Kanaan“) Der Text behauptet, die heutigen palästinensischen Araber seien direkte Nachkommen der Kanaaniter und führt den Familiennamen „Kanaan“ als Beweis an. ● Die wissenschaftliche Realität: Das ist reine Volksetymologie. Die Arabisierung der Levante geschah erst im Zuge der islamisch-arabischen Expansion im 7. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Schlacht am Jarmuk, 636 n. Chr.). Die heutigen arabischen Familien der Region sind ein historisches Mosaik aus den damaligen arabischen Eroberern, Einwanderungswellen aus Ägypten, Syrien und dem Hedschas sowie Teilen der lokalen, aramäisch sprechenden Bevölkerung, die sprachlich assimiliert wurde. Einen modernen Familiennamen als genetischen Beweis für eine 5.000-jährige Abstammung anzuführen, is so, als würde man behaupten, jeder Deutsche mit dem Nachnamen „Preuß“ sei ein direkter, unvermischter Nachfahre der baltischen Ureinwohner vor der Ankunft des Deutschen Ordens.
Das Heraklius-Framing und das Jahr 638 n. Chr. Das Papier betont, dass der byzantinische Kaiser Heraklius im Jahr 630 n. Chr. alle Juden vertrieben hatte. Die Muslime hätten 638 n. Chr. somit ein „judenreines“ Jerusalem vorgefunden und den Juden gar nichts weggenommen. ● Die historische Realität: Warum verschweigt das Papier, warum Heraklius die Juden vertrieb? Weil die jüdische Bevölkerung der Levante sich im Jahr 614 n. Chr. mit den einfallenden Persern verbündet hatte, um das brutale, antisemitische Joch der Byzantiner abzuschütteln – in der Hoffnung, endlich wieder Autonomie in Jerusalem zu erlangen. Das Papier feiert also die Früchte einer christlich-byzantinischen ethnischen Säuberung an den Juden, um den darauf folgenden islamischen Anspruch als „unschuldig“ zu deklarieren.
Fazit: Die akademische Enteignung
Dieses White Paper zeigt die nackte Panik des arabisch-haschemitischen Apparates vor der realen Archäologie. Weil man die Monumente im Boden – von den Münzen aus der Zeit des Ersten Tempels über die Siegelsysteme der jüdischen Könige (wie Hiskia) bis hin zu den Inschriften der Makkabäer – nicht wegdiskutieren kann, baut man eine absurde „Wir waren vor euch da“-Erzählung auf. Es ist die akademische Fortsetzung dessen, was Jordanien zwischen 1948 und 1967 mit Dynamit an den Synagogen der Altstadt vorgenommen hat: Das physische und historische Ausradieren des jüdischen Erbes. Und genau deshalb ist dieser Konflikt rational nicht zu lösen: Man kann keinen Kompromiss mit einer Ideologie schließen, die deine schiere historische Existenzberechtigung leugnet.
Dismantling the Unverified Narratives of Activist Journalism
The accounts shared by authors like Joss Sheldon on their blogs represent a familiar phenomenon: travel writing masquerading as objective journalism, only to deliver a pre-packaged ideological narrative. Sheldon does not set out to critique complex geopolitical realities; instead, he seeks to validate a deeply one-sided worldview, effectively preaching to the converted. His willingness to swallow unverified anecdotes whole—simply because they support the „apartheid“ label—is a textbook example of severe confirmation bias.
Consider his retelling of an encounter in the Jalazone refugee camp:
“This eloquent young man spent two years in an Israeli prison without even knowing why he had been arrested.”
To the uninitiated reader, this paints a picture of a dystopian, lawless system where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) arbitrarily abduct Palestinian minors simply on a whim. Sheldon completely omits the rigorous procedural framework of Israeli military law: every planned arrest requires multi-layered administrative approval, a judicial warrant, and a mandatory appearance before a military judge within 24 to 48 hours. Even under administrative detention, automatic judicial reviews are legally mandated every six months. The romanticized claim that an articulate student could languish in a cell for two years without a single inkling as to why is exposed as a logistical and legal impossibility. It relies entirely on a „Trust me, bro“ methodology.
To double down on his narrative, Sheldon attempts to shield his anecdotal claims behind institutional authority, quoting a report by Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) regarding the alleged systemic mistreatment of „Palestinian Child Prisoners.“ However, when confronted with the actual legal statutes and operational realities, this seemingly damning evidence collapses like a house of cards.
The report Sheldon heavily relies upon states categorically that Palestinian children are “treated as adults from the age of 16, in contrast to the situation under Israeli domestic law.”
The Reality: This claim is demonstrably false and vastly outdated. As early as 2011, the IDF enacted Military Order 1676, which officially raised the age of majority in the West Bank’s military justice system from 16 to 18.
Palestinian youths are legally recognized as minors, granting them specific protections, separate juvenile courtrooms, and specialized judges, mirroring provisions within Israeli domestic law. Peddling a discarded, decade-old statute reveals that the author is merely copy-pasting archaic grievances without performing basic fact-checking.
The text asserts that interrogations are systematically unrecorded, leaving minors helpless against forced confessions written in Hebrew—a language they cannot comprehend.
The Reality: This narrative directly violates Military Order 1745, which mandates the strict audiovisual (video and audio) recording of police interrogations involving minors in the West Bank. These lückenlos recordings become a permanent part of the official case file.
Furthermore, strict legal precedents require all interrogations to be conducted in the suspect’s native language (Arabic), and any statement presented for a signature must be fully translated or drafted in Arabic. Because defense attorneys routinely review these video tapes to throw out non-compliant evidence, no professional investigator would risk sabotaging a high-stakes security case by forcing a suspect to blindly sign a Hebrew document.
Sheldon reaches his emotional climax by shocking his audience with the claim that children face a “maximum sentence of twenty years’ imprisonment under Israeli Military Ordinance 378” for throwing stones.
The Reality: This is an egregious manipulation of statutory maximums. A 20-year sentence does exist in the criminal code (identically to civilian criminal law in western democracies), but it is legally reserved for cases demonstrating explicitly lethal intent—such as dropping boulders or launching heavy stones onto highways to cause high-speed civilian vehicle crashes and mass casualties.
For standard stone-throwing during riots or demonstrations, the actual sentencing matrix for minors typically involves a few months of detention, fines, or suspended sentences. Presenting a lethal-intent felony maximum as the baseline punishment for throwing a pebble is pure distortion.
4. Denying the Operational Logic of Nighttime Arrests
Finally, the report laments the terrifying nature of early-morning arrests carried out by heavily armed soldiers in family homes.
The Reality: The author completely ignores the tactical why. If Israeli authorities attempted to execute a standard arrest warrant in a highly volatile, weaponized environment like the Jalazone camp during broad daylight, it would instantly trigger mass riots, armed skirmishes, and inevitable casualties on both sides.
Conducting operations under the cover of night leverages the element of surprise, allowing the IDF to apprehend the target cleanly and withdraw swiftly without escalating into bloodshed. Paradoxically, the very tactic criticized as harassment is engineered to preserve civilian lives.
Joss Sheldon’s blog entries do not constitute investigative journalism; they are an exercise in selective compilation. By regurgitating unverified, outdated mouth-to-mouth narratives from politically motivated NGOs while completely blinding himself to the highly regulated, documented legal framework on the ground, he constructs a fictional reality. His writing serves only to flatter the prejudices of an audience that prefers a comforting, binary fable of absolute villains and unblemished victims over the gritty, complex realities of counter-terrorism and security infrastructure.
We continue our journey through the alternative reality of Joss Sheldon. Having established his historical and demographic blindness at the airport, Sheldon now moves inland, deeper into the West Bank, where his inner „Mauer im Kopf“ (the wall in his own mind) completely takes over.
Let’s look at how he frames the essential security infrastructure of a state under siege:
“The Wall is, if nothing else, a reminder to the Palestinians that the Zionists are in charge. It is not the only reminder they face on a daily basis. Checkpoints are everywhere, and though most are not operational or even efficient (I am sure any real ‚terrorist‘ could easily find a way around most checkpoints), their mere existence serves to remind the population that they can be stopped, searched, delayed, arrested or harassed at any time. And the locals are harassed at checkpoints. In the most extreme cases, they are forced to sit for hours in the sun. Some Palestinians have been stripped naked at checkpoints; others have suffered miscarriages.”
He must surely have reacted in this way on his return journey to Jerusalem
1. The Obligation of a State vs. Human Shields
Notice how Sheldon’s own mental barrier forces him to see a concrete monolith even where there is only a technological wire security fence. Despite his obsessive demonization of Israel, he still fundamentally fails to grasp why a border barrier or a checkpoint exists in the first place.
He does not understand—or refuses to accept—that a sovereign state has a legal and moral obligation to protect its citizens from slaughter. This stands in stark, brutal contrast to the terrorist regime in Gaza. Since 2007, Hamas has constructed a multi-billion-dollar, vast network of underground tunnels. Yet, they explicitly deny their own civilian population access to these tunnels for safety, choosing instead to weaponize them as human shields and cannon fodder while their leadership lives in luxury abroad. For Israel, security infrastructure saves lives; for the Islamist terrorists, civilian vulnerability is a PR strategy.
2. The Oslo Accords and the Pre-Schengen Reality
Furthermore, Sheldon’s narrative suffers from a total lack of legal context. He writes as if these checkpoints appeared out of a vacuum of pure malice. He completely glosses over the fact that Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords—agreements explicitly approved and signed by Yasser Arafat. Under these treaties, the West Bank was legally divided into Areas A, B, and C to manage security and administration during a transitional phase. Where you have agreed-upon administrative zones and international borders, you have checkpoints.
Before the Schengen Agreement dismantled border posts within the European Union, anyone traveling between European nations had to present their passport, wait in lines, and occasionally face a full vehicle search. It was a normal, daily reality of state sovereignty.
Sheldon currently resides in India. I highly doubt he has ever attempted to cross the land borders into Pakistan or Bangladesh with the expectation of a casual, barrier-free stroll. Yet, because the state in question is Israel, he seriously expects a nation surrounded by hostile actors to throw open its gates, abandon its treaty-defined security posts, and welcome potential terrorists with open arms.
When exceptional abuses or tragedies do occur at these flashpoints, Sheldon acts as if they are state-mandated policy. He completely ignores that Israel is an open society; you can read about these controversies, investigations, and subsequent public outcries in any daily Israeli newspaper, debated fiercely by a population that actively protests for civil liberties.
3. Tales from the „Paulanergarten“
But the highlight of his reportage comes when he introduces his ultimate crown witness—a classic trope of Western NGO tourism:
“I meet a development worker in Ramallah who has to pass through a checkpoint every day to get to her work in Jerusalem. Although her car has diplomatic stickers, she is always stopped and asked for her ID because her car has white Palestinian number plates. She has to watch as Israeli cars (with yellow number plates) race past her.”
And here they are: the classic German “Geschichten aus dem Paulanergarten”—the tall tales told over a pint of beer where the narrative matters far more than the facts.
Let’s unpack this „diplomatic“ drama. If this development worker were driving a legitimate, registered diplomatic vehicle, it would possess official diplomatic plates recognized by international protocol—plates that ensure specific transit privileges. If she is driving a vehicle with white Palestinian plates, she is driving a standard, locally registered civilian vehicle. Adding a few custom „NGO stickers“ to your bumper does not grant you sovereign immunity at a high-security military checkpoint.
The yellow plates she watches „race past“ belong to vehicles registered in Israel—driven by Israeli citizens (both Jewish and Arab) who have already passed through the state’s domestic security screening and are operating within their own domestic traffic grid. This isn’t racial segregation; it’s basic, standard traffic management based on vehicle registration and security clearance. To frame an identity check on a non-registered vehicle at an international zone boundary as a human rights violation is the height of Western expat entitlement.
4. The Myth of Total Blockade vs. The Reality of the IDF Data
Sheldon continues to pack his travel diary with increasingly dramatic horror stories, designed to satisfy the worst confirmation biases of his Western readership:
“The checkpoints don’t just delay people. Those in the centre of Hebron stop ambulances and animals too. As a result, locals often miss out on vital medical care, and they can no longer use their donkeys to get their goods to market… Some Palestinians have been stripped naked at checkpoints; others have suffered miscarriages.”
Sheldon and his readers desperately want these stories to be true. To them, any hearsay serves as absolute proof of an „unjust state.“ But let’s introduce some actual investigative journalism and clear up the facts regarding the checkpoint system.
According to data from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the narrative of a completely paralyzed West Bank is a myth. For years, Palestinian civilians have been able to travel all the way from Jenin in the north to Bethlehem in the south without encountering a single permanent military checkpoint.
The numbers tell a story of drastic reduction, rather than escalating oppression:
In July 2008, the number of permanent checkpoints stood at 40.
By May 2013 and leading into February 2014, the IDF had systematically dismantled these posts, reducing the number of permanent checkpoints down to just 13.
The remaining checkpoints are not even continuously manned; their operation depends entirely on the immediate, fluid security threat. While international observers correctly note that temporary physical barriers, road gates, and earth mounds still exist to manage security around the main barrier, the reduction of fixed checkpoints was a massive, documented goodwill gesture aimed at improving Palestinian daily life while balancing the strategic objective of preventing terrorism.
5. Weaponizing Ambulances: Why Security is Rigid
Sheldon weeps over the fact that ambulances are stopped and inspected in Hebron. He presents this as arbitrary cruelty, entirely omitting why these rigid measures became a military necessity.
The Red Cross and Red Crescent protocols demand that medical transport remain neutral. Yet, Palestinian terror organizations repeatedly shattered this neutrality by using ambulances as logistical vehicles for mass murder:
In March 2002, Israeli forces discovered a massive explosive device hidden inside an official Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) ambulance. The Red Crescent itself was forced to express shock and launch an internal investigation into how its life-saving vehicles were being weaponized.
In January 2004, near the village of Jit, a routine check on an empty PRCS ambulance led to security detentions. On the exact same day, another ambulance transporting a diabetic patient to Tulkarm had to be stopped; it was permitted to proceed to the hospital only after security forces identified and arrested a terror suspect hiding as the patient’s „companion.“
When a society uses pregnant women and medical vehicles to smuggle suicide vests and operatives, the neighboring state has a catastrophic security problem. Inspecting an ambulance isn’t „apartheid“—it is basic counter-terrorism.
6. Rule of Law vs. Unverified Propaganda
Finally, Sheldon plays his ultimate emotional card: the tragic claim of miscarriages and abuse at checkpoints. He treats these claims as systemic, state-sanctioned policy.
Let us look at how a real country with the rule of law actually handles misconduct, compared to the unverified numbers of a highly politicized ministry:
When individual Israeli soldiers violate standard operating procedures or cross ethical lines, they face court-martials and imprisonment. For example, in 2008, an Israeli soldier commanding a checkpoint outside Nablus refused passage to a Palestinian woman in active labor. The woman was forced to give birth at the checkpoint, and tragically, the infant was stillborn. The response of the Israeli state? The soldier was immediately stripped of his command, discharged from the military, and sentenced to two weeks in military prison.
Now let’s compare this accountability to the claims Sheldon blindly parrots. The Palestinian Ministry of Health claimed that between 2000 and 2006, at least 68 women gave birth at checkpoints, alleging 35 miscarriages. These figures remain entirely unconfirmed, published by an authority with a massive vested interest in psychological warfare.
Yet, even if we look at the tragedies that did occur, the ultimate moral culpability lies with the terrorists who turned civilian transit points into combat zones. If you wage a war of suicide bombings, you create a reality where a soldier must check every vehicle—and the resulting delays are the tragic, direct consequence of that terror strategy, not the malicious intent of the state defending itself.
7. The Entitled „International Tourist“ and Pre-Schengen Realities
As Sheldon’s diary draws to a close, his deeply ingrained Western privilege and sheer arrogance erupt to the surface:
“As an international tourist, I am not subjected to the harassment that most Palestinians face at checkpoints. I am only hindered three times: A soldier boards my bus and demands my ID as I am on my way back to East Jerusalem. On the way to Hebron, I am questioned and searched.”
What is most insufferable about characters like Sheldon is the breathtaking condescension with which they travel the globe—a modern reincarnation of the colonial Herrenmenschenmentalität (master-race mentality). He feels compelled to explicitly emphasize his status as an „international tourist,“ as if his Western passport should automatically exempt him from the basic administrative realities of a conflict zone.
Had he bothered to do even a shred of preliminary research, he would have known that everyone crossing from the West Bank back into Israeli sovereign territory is subject to identity verification and security screening. A border guard is not going to look at him and say, „Ah, everything is clear, Habibi, I see you are an Englishman—no need to check you, have a wonderful journey.“ To frame standard border control on a public transit route as being „hindered“ reveals the staggering entitlement of a vacationer who expects the rest of the world to function as his personal, barrier-free amusement park.
Sheldon’s interpretation of One Thousand and One Nights upon seeing a female soldier
8. The Erotic Phantasms of a Wannabe Adventurer
But the true comedic climax of his entire travelogue occurs when he returns to Israel via the Jordanian border at Eilat, leading to a scene that reads like the fever dream of a frustrated, self-absorbed novelist:
“After a week in Jordan, I return to Israel via the border at Eilat. I face a pretty young soldier. She is petite, with freckles on her chubby cheeks. Her hair gleams and her eyes sparkle. ‘You’ve been to Israel before,’ she says. ‘Where were you?’… I feel I have no choice but to tell the truth. ‘The West Bank and Jerusalem,’ I say. There is a pause. And then the interrogation begins: ‘Which cities did you visit? Why did you go there? What did you do? Who did you stay with? Why aren’t you here with your parents? Why on earth do you want to spend time with the Arabs?’ The soldier’s tone is not aggressive. She clearly leads the conversation, but there is a hint of curiosity in her voice. If we were in a bar, I’d say she was flirting.”
Welcome to the ultimate wet dream of a blocked adventurer. In the 19th century, European orientalists traveled to exotic lands dreaming of being seduced by dark-eyed beauties in a harem. In 2015, Joss Sheldon undergoes a standard, highly synchronized security screening at an international border and genuinely convinces himself that the uniform-clad intelligence officer is hitting on him.
The absolute absurdity of this self-delusion is staggering. It never even crosses his narrow mind that these highly specific questions—investigating his itinerary, his contacts, and his motivations—are asked with mathematical precision for a singular purpose: state security. The border official is evaluating his body language, checking his consistency, and assessing whether an unpredictable Western ideological tourist poses a security risk or has been compromised.
Yet, Sheldon’s inflated ego instantly transforms a routine counter-terrorism screening into a romantic bar-room encounter.
9. The Selective Silence of the Authoritarian Tour
What makes this sequence even more telling is Sheldon’s selective memory. He mentions he just spent an entire week in Jordan. Did he cross the kingdom without a single checkpoint? Was he not subjected to the notoriously rigorous questioning of Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate (GID)?
We can only speculate. Perhaps he got lucky, or perhaps the Jordanian border officials instantly identified him as an eccentric Western simpleton and waved him through as a harmless curiosity. Or perhaps he was subjected to a grueling, highly invasive interrogation by Arab authorities—but chose not to dedicate a single syllable to it in his blog. After all, a thoroughly intense interrogation by Jordanian or Egyptian security forces doesn’t fit the rigid ideological script of his anti-Zionist crusade. If you cannot blame a Jew for the scrutiny, the experience loses all literary and financial market value for Sheldon.
To Be Continued…
Sheldon stands at a legal border post created by the Oslo Accords and diagnoses a human tragedy because an NGO worker had to show her ID, a soldier checked his bus, and a female border guard refused to drop into his lap. The absurdity of his journey deepens as he lays bare his true intentions.
Because as we will see in Part 2, this isn’t about the welfare of the Palestinian people at all. If it were, his „investigative“ passion wouldn’t stop exactly where the Israeli border ends…
“If you go on a journey, you’ll have something to talk about,” my parents always used to say. And they were right. Though I doubt they anticipated the likes of Joss Sheldon—a self-proclaimed universal genius who, according to his alternative internet bios, „identifies as Jewish.“ Well, I identify as a unicorn without actually being one. In the real world, you either are Jewish or you are not.
But in certain Western salon-anarchist circles, wrapping yourself in a proxy Jewish identity has become quite trendy. Why? Because it serves as the ultimate professional alibi to profit from anti-Semitism and Israel-hatred while claiming moral immunity. Anti-Zionism sells, and Sheldon apparently discovered this lucrative niche around 2015, if not before.
For his book Occupied, he embedded himself „undercover“ in Israel. And once you find yourself in the „eye of the dragon,“ why not milk the experience? If you beg long enough online, portraying Israel as the root of all evil keeps the crowdfunding going—especially when your books aren’t exactly fueling a Hemingway-level legacy.
After reading his travelogue sermon, I picked out a few key passages that completely expose his bias. He is not an objective observer; he is a man with a rigid agenda: to paint Israel in the worst possible light, by any means necessary.
1. The Chomsky Fig Leaf
“The world-renowned scholar and American Jew Noam Chomsky was interviewed by Democracy Now back in 2014 about Israeli ‘apartheid’. He replied as follows:”
Chomsky’s trivialisation of the Killing Fields in Cambodia
What strikes me time and again about these characters is their obsession with weaponizing identity. If Chomsky had been raised in the Voodoo tradition, Sheldon wouldn’t feel the need to mention it. But Chomsky’s heritage is vital here; it serves as Sheldon’s structural shield. It doesn’t matter that Chomsky has spouted enough geopolitical garbage over the decades to fill a library—including his unhinged, mathematically impossible claim that Israel has killed 2 to 3 million Palestinians since 2023. For Sheldon, he is the convenient crown witness.
2. Paranoia at Ben Gurion Airport
“If apartheid isn’t immediately obvious the moment you step into Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, it is certainly the soldiers who uphold it… They question me as I pass through customs. And I am even surrounded by them whilst waiting to board a bus to Jerusalem.”
Good grief, Joss. If the dog hadn’t stopped to defecate, he’d have caught the rabbit. He seriously claims to diagnose „apartheid“ because armed soldiers are patrolling an airport. What did he expect—the Salvation Army handing out cookies?
The man writes as if he hasn’t set foot in an international hub since 9/11. Walk through Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Brussels, or Heathrow, and you will encounter heavily armed police units dressed in tactical gear carrying Heckler & Koch MP5s. Israel protects its airport—a historical target for international terrorism—just like any other wehrhafte Demokratie. And yes, they questioned you. Anyone standing in a high-security zone looking visibly paranoid, sweating, and actively searching for a fictional „Jews Only“ sign is going to invite a security interview.
3. The Romanticized „Zoo“ and Demographic Blindness
“A soldier sits on a bench, holding his rifle in his lap and stroking it like a mother strokes her baby… An elderly Arab couple keeps their distance… Passengers who look Jewish… walk past us… I feel like I’m making a fool of myself standing here like a statue…”
Here, Sheldon’s diary devolves into a sort of bizarre, voyeuristic prose. He watches a soldier touch a weapon and constructs a psychological drama. He sees an elderly couple keeping their distance—a universal human reaction to armed security at a terminal—and diagnoses systemic oppression.
More tellingly, he claims to instantly differentiate „Jewish-looking“ from „Arab-looking“ passengers. I always wonder how these Western hipsters possess this magical ethno-racial radar. The Nazis literally had to use calipers and phänotypic charts to satisfy their delusions, yet Sheldon does it at a glance while standing „like a statue“ at a bus station.
He completely ignores the demographic reality: Mizrahi Jews—those descended from families ethnically cleansed from Arab and Islamic lands like Yemen, Iraq, and Morocco—make up between 48% and 65% of Israel’s Jewish population. They share the exact same Middle Eastern phänotype. Sheldon is looking at a diverse society through a binary Western lens of „white colonizers,“ completely blind to the fact that he cannot visually tell who is who.
4. The Apartheid Bus Ride
“I board a bus that is fine by most standards, but nowhere near as nice as the intercity coach I travelled on earlier, and set off for the West Bank.”
Ah, yes. Just like South Africa! The regional commuter bus isn’t as luxurious as the long-distance express coach, so it must be racism.
Sheldon treats infrastructure differences as human rights violations. He completely omits the Oslo Accords. The regional transport, infrastructure, and local administration within Areas A and B are the direct responsibility of the Palästinensische Autonomiebehörde (PA) and private Arab transport companies. If the bus is older, it is a reflection of local management, not a Zionist conspiracy. In South Africa, the segregation was codified by law; in Israeli buses, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Drusen sit side-by-side every single day.
The notion held by people such as Joss Sheldon that Israel is a Zionist apartheid and occupying regime
5. The Magic of the Security Barrier
“As I look out of the bus window, the Apartheid Wall comes into view… My heart sinks, but the bus carries on.”
Finally, the grand finale. The cinematic backdrop arrives, and Sheldon gets to play Indiana Jones. The „Wall“—which is actually over 90% a technological wire security fence and only a concrete structure in specific high-risk urban areas—didn’t drop from the sky out of pure malice.
Sheldon conveniently suffers from historical amnesia regarding the Second Intifada. Let us remind him of the empiric reality behind that barrier: During the 1,558 days of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Israelis faced 20,406 terrorist attacks, including 138 suicide bombings and over 13,000 shooting incidents. 1,036 Israelis were murdered, 715 of them innocent civilians blown to pieces in buses, cafes, and shopping malls. The barrier was built to protect human lives, and it cut suicide bombings by over 90%. Furthermore, Israel’s Supreme Court has repeatedly ordered the military to reroute sections of the fence to accommodate Palestinian humanitarian appeals. Would a true „apartheid state“ allow its supreme judiciary to check its own military to protect the agricultural land of non-citizens?
Sheldon should visit Rafah between Egypt and Gaza, or look at the heavily funded EU border barriers in Ceuta and Melilla keeping African migrants out. But those don’t trigger an eleven-part blog series, because no Israelis are involved.
6. The Deep Racism of Post-Colonial Kitsch
“An olive grove nestles against the Wall, full of rampant cacti… A pile of rubbish is burning… Children are chasing chickens… This wall paralyses the economy… All the Palestinians can do is paint.”
This is where the kitsch turns into something much more sinister. Sheldon’s imagery borders on the classic colonial trope of the „noble savage“—archaic, child-like figures chasing chickens in the smoke, whose only agency is painting cute slogans like „Make hummus instead of walls“ on concrete. It reads like Ephraim Kishon’s caricature in Salach Shabati: „Always laughing, always singing, must be mad.“ Or Martha Gellhorn’s 1960s refugee camp dispatches, noting how baufällige huts were described by local leaders as golden marble palaces to Western visitors.
The deep irony is that Sheldon’s post-colonial worldview is inherently racist. By reducing the Palestinians to helpless victims who „can only paint,“ he denies them all political maturity and agency. He completely glosses over the billions in foreign aid poured into the West Bank over decades—far exceeding the Marshall Plan per capita. He ignores the universities, the corporations, and the modern metropolis of Ramallah developed with Western funds. He refuses to hold the PA accountable for its legendary corruption, nepotism, and its „Pay for Slay“ terror-funding system.
In Sheldon’s dogmatic universe, a society can never be broken because its leaders are kleptocrats, religious fanatics, or state-certified autocrats; it can only be broken because the West or the Zionists exist.
To Be Continued…
How utterly fraudulent his entire investigative journey truly is becomes clear when we look at what—and who—he purposefully left out. Because, as we will explore in Part 2, Sheldon doesn’t actually care about the Palestinian people at all. If he did, his research would have taken him to Lebanon or Syria to document the actual, legally codified apartheid and violence Palestinians face under Arab regimes. But those tragedies hold zero market value for him.
After all, a Palestinian life is only worth documenting if a Zionist can be blamed for it.
Boycotts against Israel are nothing new; they are probably as old as Jewish history itself. It is reasonable to assume that, when the inhabitants of Judea and Samaria rebelled against the Roman occupation, laws were enacted in Rome to boycott goods from that region. Perhaps Romans stood outside the market stalls with hand-painted signs bearing the words “Noli ab Iudaeo emere” to deter citizens from buying dates from the Middle East or wine from Mount Carmel. A special tax was levied, and when all that came to nothing, the Temple was summarily destroyed and most of the inhabitants expelled.
Flavius Josephus wrote nothing about the boycott in his Bellum Iudaicum, but who knows, perhaps it fell victim to the editorial process.
In any case, the boycott of Israel has been back in vogue in political circles for more than a decade now. Whether it concerns goods, culture or science – no stone is left unturned in the quest to bring this small Jewish country – surrounded by states that have been trying in vain since Israel’s founding to destroy the country and drive out its inhabitants – to its economic knees. When BDS was founded, hordes of ‘critics of Israel’, armed with stickers and magnifying glasses, poured out to track down every single item, however small, bearing the words ‘Made in Israel’ in supermarkets and warehouses. As soon as they descended into hysteria, they plastered the products with boycott stickers and gathered outside the shops to to revive the spirit of 1933: “Germans, defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!” – Deutsche wehrt Euch!! Kauft nicht bei Juden!!“
State-sanctioned idiots like Roger Waters exploited their borderline mental inadequacy to consistently and relentlessly demonise Israel and also to harass their fellow artists. Waters even popped out of Bob Dylan’s bedside drawer like a jack-in-the-box and screamed: “YOU MUST NOT PERFORM IN ISRAEL, YOU ZIONIST!!!” For days on end, they scoured the internet and snooped on companies and their founders right down to their underwear to prove any links to the Levant. The founder of Marks & Spencer was Jewish, they sell goods from Israel, so they send their troops out on the hunt.
I can still clearly remember trying to engage these people in conversation outside M&S in Cork in 2010, and realising they believe they are on a divine mission; they tried to ignore me when I asked if they couldn’t care less about Palestinian workers, but I got no answer because they didn’t have one.
And despite numerous instructional videos from Israel on how to boycott the country properly, these people are still swarming the internet in droves, spreading their mantra like a broken record. How I wished that these brave fighters for imaginary human rights would make good on their threats and finally hand in their computers, laptops, smartphones and other tech for recycling.
That would bring incredible peace and tranquillity; to be able to gather, they would have to send messengers to the remotest corners of a country. As they shun modern cars – a technology developed in Israel – they would have to travel on foot or by bicycle from the remotest corners of a country to its capital cities.
Our left-wingers in Ireland, who concern themselves exclusively with Palestine as if it were a new county, whilst thousands of Irish people live on the streets and Sinn Féin, Ireland’s richest party with the largest property portfolio, refuses to open its properties to the homeless, are trying to force the government to cancel a football match between Ireland and Israel, whilst viewing a friendly match between our team and Qatar as a sign of friendship between nations.
That human rights are being trampled underfoot in Qatar is a fact; the main thing is that you can sit in the stadium and protest loudly against Israel. On top of that, people get terribly upset when our Taoiseach asks the opposition in the Dáil whether, should the Irish government decide on a boycott, they would send people like Mary Lou McDonald – SF – Richard Boyd Barrett – PbP – and the other crackpots, and explain to the laid-off workers why their unemployment is now necessary and that they intend to look after the people in future; after all, Ireland is dependent on Israel. It is not just Intel with its massive manufacturing hub here; TEVA, with two sites, is one of the country’s largest employers.
I would therefore very much welcome it if the EU countries and and their aggressively ignorant citizens, who want to boycott Israel, would finally and once and for all consistently enforce this and do away with all their technology for good. At the very latest when the infrastructure has collapsed, they will realise that their idiotic boycott is a classic own goal.
