In 2015, a Palestinian newspaper reported that Israel had recruited a dolphin to assassinate Hamas naval commandos.
Not just any dolphin.
A combat dolphin, equipped with surveillance gear and trained to attack.
Iranian media went even further, insisting the creature was not a dolphin at all but an Israeli-made robot dolphin.
Yes. A robot dolphin.
Oy. These killer Zionist dolphins.
Here's another one.
When sharks attacked tourists in Egypt's Red Sea resorts, Captain Ismail, appearing on Egypt Today, suggested Mossad had trained those very sharks in order to sabotage Egyptian tourism. The region's governor did not immediately rule out the possibility.
Welcome to one of the strangest categories on Wikipedia: "Israel animal-related conspiracy theories."
Spy Birds Everywhere
But aquatic creatures are only the beginning. When it comes to birds colluding with Israel, the sky's the limit. Consider a few headlines:
- "Hezbollah accuses Israeli eagle of committing espionage." — HuffPost
- "Renegade bird accused of being Israeli spy cleared after careful examination in Turkey." — Hürriyet Daily News
- "Sudan: Israeli 'spy vulture' nabbed in reconnaissance mission." — CNN
In these cases, cooler heads eventually prevailed. The bands attached to the birds' legs were not microchips, satellites, or secret surveillance devices. They were simply the metal tags that ornithologists commonly use to track migration patterns.
The More Sinister Versions
But not all conspiracies about Israel are merely absurd. Some have fueled real-world violence and deep-seated hatred.
Jordanian television host Dr. Bakr Al-Abadi once announced on state TV that Israel had released plague-carrying rats during the 1967 war in order to destroy Egyptian agriculture and bring about "the annihilation of Arabs everywhere."
In his words, the "Zionist entity has harnessed scientific and technological development in the service of its evils and to satisfy its criminal urges."
In the service of its evils. To satisfy its criminal urges.
An image rises in my mind: the sadistic, cunning, almost satanic Israeli. It offers a clue as to how generations in parts of the Arab world have been taught to view Israelis — if not Jews generally — with fear and loathing.
Then again, this particular script is not new.
In medieval Europe, Jews were blamed for the Black Death, accused of poisoning wells and spreading plague among Christians. These libels sparked massacres and expulsions. When those charges lost their power, new ones took their place: Jews were said to kidnap Christian children and use their blood in baking matzah.
But enough with Europe. In many parts of the Middle East, the same formula — Jews as sinister and omnipotent villains — has been updated and repackaged for a modern audience.
The Illusion of Invincibility
Why would Israel, and Jews more broadly, be the target of so many extravagant conspiracy theories?
Political scientist Amr Youssef, an adjunct professor at the American University in Cairo, argues that such conspiracies grow out of an inflated perception of Israeli power.
He writes:"Most Egyptians believe that the premises of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, displayed in an Egyptian TV series in 2002, are true… Within this framework, obviously inflated notions — such as the claim that Mossad orchestrated the fatal shark attacks in Egypt's Red Sea resorts in 2010 — are easily accepted.
"Notwithstanding that such allegations have no factual or logical grounds, few stop to ask why an Israel facing serious security challenges (Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others) would busy itself with that kind of stuff."
Youssef concludes that the persistence of such beliefs among large segments of the Egyptian public is "disappointing."
In a way, it is not hard to see how these myths arise.
Israel is tiny — roughly the size of New Jersey. The surrounding Arab states together cover more than 600,000 square miles. Yet this small country has survived repeated wars and existential threats.
To some observers, that survival begins to look almost supernatural.
If such a small state cannot be defeated, perhaps it must possess hidden powers.
The Fantasy of A Perfect War
I sometimes see a similar assumption even here on Medium. Commenters often ask, with genuine outrage:
Why can't Israel, with all its advanced technology, simply avoid civilian casualties and strike only terrorists?
The question assumes a kind of science-fiction precision: that modern weapons can always distinguish perfectly between combatants and civilians in dense urban environments.
War rarely works that way.
Yet the belief persists that Israel possesses almost magical capabilities — that its technology can solve problems no army in history has ever solved.
This reminds me of an old joke.
Two Jews in prewar Germany are reading newspapers. One is reading a Yiddish paper and looks miserable. The other is reading the Nazi paper Der Stürmer and is smiling.
The first man asks, "How can you laugh while reading that garbage?"
The second replies, "In your newspaper, Jews are beaten in the streets, driven from their jobs, and robbed of their property. But in this one" — he taps Der Stürmer — "apparently we run the banks, control the governments, and secretly rule the world!"
"So tell me," he says, "which newspaper would you rather read?"
The Israelis I Know
Who is this hallucinatory Jew who knows everything? What is this hallucinatory country that controls everything?
I think of my amiable, soulful brother-in-law, a beekeeper.
I think of the bewigged woman in Eilat who arranged to have washing machines and dryers installed on every hotel floor where evacuees from October 7 had been placed.
I think of my niece Rachel, who does couples counseling. My other niece Esther, who makes therapeutic films. My nephew — father of three — whose job was to deactivate mines in the north, so close to the Lebanese border that he could see Hezbollah fighters with his own eyes.
When my sister risked her life to bring him a new bulletproof vest, he refused it. What about vests for his comrades?
I think of the old lady in the pink mini-skirt who grates bread for the pigeons as if her life depends on it. The plump Israeli Arab vendor in the shuk who says, "Don't worry — pay me tomorrow."
I think of newlyweds walking through Jerusalem's streets from both the haredi and Arab communities. The hippie Hasid on Jaffa Road singing his heart out.
These are the Israelis I know.
People who dream of living ordinary lives, the kind of lives we in America assume is our right.
Journalist Haviv Rettig Gur once put it this way:
"You don't know any of this. You don't know what Israelis see when they look out at the world. You don't know Israelis because you refuse to know them — because bad professors taught you it was immoral."
I'm not sure by what mechanism Jews — a persecuted minority for millennia — are reimagined as omniscient and omnipotent.
In truth, we have always lived with a sense of fragility. Success has rarely protected Jews; if anything, it has often provoked envy, resentment, and fear.
Nor do I understand how Israel has come to be cast as the archetypal "white oppressor," when most Israelis descend from families expelled from places like Iraq, Syria, Iran, Egypt, and Morocco.
My own mother was one of them.
This article offers one possible explanation for the conspiracies: fear, magnified by myth.
But the loathing?
That question I'll leave to someone else.
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/In+defense+of+reason,+not+Israel.-a0257565909. Very worthwhile reading in its entirety.
Memri.org An independent nonpartisan organization, providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Russian, and Chinese media, to the governments of the U.S. and its allies.
Israel-related animal conspiracy theories — Wikipedia
*Hamas's Genocidal Intentions Were Never a Secret — The Atlantic