What If Everything You’ve Heard About Israel Is Wrong? | Ryan Williams – The Scottish Korean

THE UNFILTERED TOURIST: Why a Scottish-Korean Influencer Left the Comfort of the West to Find the Truth in Israel

PART 1: The Naked Truth From the Living Room Couch

We live in an era of sanitized outrage. From the plush comfort of London flats and suburban American living rooms, a generation of digital citizens conducts moral warfare with the swipe of a thumb. For these armchair judges, the world’s most complex geopolitical tragedies are distilled into neat, binary narratives of victims and villains, oppressors and the oppressed. Their biggest existential crisis on any given Tuesday is a delayed Amazon Prime delivery or a glitch in their Netflix subscription.

Yet, these are the very people who feel entitled to pass absolute judgment on the morality of a nation fighting for its survival.

Enter Ryan Williams.

"You cannot judge a war and how disgusting it is until you’ve been there. You’re asking idiotic people to judge the morality of a war in Israel... It doesn't matter if they understand or not. What matters is that the IDF win."

Williams—a Scottish-Korean political commentator, private-school educated classical cellist, and one of the loudest, most unapologetic defenders of Western values on social media—is not here to make friends. He doesn’t speak in the cautious, focus-grouped language of modern diplomacy. He speaks with the raw, provocative candor of a man who believes the West has grown fat, lazy, and profoundly detached from reality.

For years, Williams defended Israel from afar, engaging in the brutal trencheswarfare of Instagram and TikTok. But he realized a fundamental hypocrisy: millions of people hold immutable, aggressive opinions about Israel without ever having set foot on its soil. They have never walked the cobblestones of Jerusalem, never sat in a Tel Aviv café, and never looked into the eyes of Israelis living under the constant shadow of existential threat.

So, Williams bought a plane ticket. He traded his comfortable British surroundings for a week-on-the-ground reality check. What he discovered didn’t just shock his critics—it annoyed him for entirely different reasons.

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PART 2: Fruits, Stray Cats, and the Myth of the Warzone

For a man expecting the dramatic, ash-covered backdrop of a Hollywood war movie, Williams’ first impression of Israel was unexpectedly… boring.

The Shock of Safety

“I haven’t experienced any of the bombs yet, so I’m quite disappointed,” Williams jokes, flashing his characteristic dark wit. While Western media broadcasts an image of a nation permanently on the brink of collapse, Williams found beautiful beaches, a vibrant nightlife, and a society functioning with an defiant sense of normalcy. “Iran was supposed to be bombing Israel, so it’s not very exciting. It’s too safe and it’s too boring.”

Beyond the tongue-in-cheek disappointment, Williams found himself captivated by the micro-realities of Israeli daily life:

The Audacity of the Locals: “I went to Jerusalem and saw a sign saying ‘Do not sit,’ and there was a rabbi sitting right under it. These rabbis are badasses.”

The Quality of Life: He expresses a comical rage toward Israeli agriculture. “The vegetables and fruits are annoying because now I have to go back to eating British vegetables. I’m very angry at Jews because now I know what real fruit tastes like.”

The Identity Mosaic: Coming from the West, where the Middle Eastern conflict is often framed through a rigid racial lens, Williams was surprised to learn that 20% of Israeli citizens are Arabs. “In the West, it’s quite easy to see who’s friendly and who’s not. But to me, as an Asian, you guys all look the same. I also discovered Israel is technically in Asia. So, Israelis are Asians. We own you guys. You’re just my Jewy Asians.”

PART 3: Hunting for “Apartheid” in Jerusalem

One of the primary objectives of Williams’ trip was to confront the most damaging label thrown at the Jewish state by Western academics and activists: Apartheid.

Determined to see it for himself, Williams went looking for segregation. He found it—but not in the way the United Nations or university encampments describe it.

“I’m in a lot of danger because you don’t have enough apartheid. In fact, you don’t have apartheid at all,” Williams reports.

The Temple Mount Incident

The only instance of strict religious segregation Williams encountered occurred at the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem, where entry to certain areas is restricted exclusively to Muslims.

In a comedic attempt to bypass the rules, Williams tried to convince the Israeli security forces guarding the site that he belonged:

Williams: "Look, I am a Muslim."
Guards: "No, you're not."
Williams: "Get me in! I am a Muslim!" (Said three times)
Guards: "Nope, you're still not a Muslim. Go back and eat some shawarma."

“So, Jews are racist against Scottish-Koreans and they don’t believe anything I say,” Williams laughs. “That was my worst racist experience in Israel—that, and paying 8 Shekels ($25) for a shawarma. Paying that much for a shawarma is disgusting. That is a problem country. I will never return.”

Jokes aside, the observation highlights a glaring double standard: the very state accused of systemic apartheid actively deploys its own security forces to protect the exclusive religious rights and autonomy of its Muslim minority.

PART 4: The Origin of the Conflict: Facing the Radical Threat

Why does a Scottish-Korean cellist with no ancestral, religious, or familial ties to the Levant care so deeply about Israel?

For Williams, the journey didn’t start with a profound love for Zionism; it started with a profound distaste for radical Islam.

Speaking for the Voiceless

Williams’ political awakening began when he witnessed the global silence surrounding the atrocities committed by Islamic extremists against minorities in the Middle East. He recalls watching videos of 19 young Yazidi girls who were burned alive by ISIS because they had been raped and were deemed “impure” by their captors.

“I spoke up about this, and the West called me an ‘Islamophobe,'” Williams says, his tone shifting from comedic to deadly serious. “Nineteen beautiful Yazidi girls get burned alive, and if I talk about it, I’m the problem? It seems people are focusing on the wrong things.”

The Ultimate Scapegoat

As Williams continued to speak out against radical theological ideologies, he noticed a bizarre, recurring phenomenon in Western political discourse: no matter what crisis was occurring in the world, the blame invariably shifted back to the Jewish people.

As an Asian man, Williams found this logically absurd.

PART 5: The High School Mentality and Positive Racism

When asked why Israel faces such an aggressive, disproportionate double standard on the world stage, Williams attributes it to a toxic mix of human envy and psychological immaturity.

The High School World Stage

“People never grow up. The world is like high school,” Williams explains. “If you’re different at school, people pick on you. If you’re doing better than everybody else, people don’t like that. The fact is, Jews are an insanely smart race of people. Naturally, people are going to be jealous.”

Williams notes that Jewish culture has managed to achieve unparalleled success in science, comedy, media, and academia despite centuries of persecution. In a strange twist, he argues that the antisemitic tropes cooked up by the West actually sound like compliments to an outsider.

"Jewish racism is actually quite positive racism in the sense that the stereotype is: you’re too smart, you’re too successful, you guys are able to climb any hierarchy and control it. I would love to hear those stereotypes about me! That’s like saying, 'Ryan, you’re too handsome, you’re too intelligent.' Instead, I’m Asian, so my stereotypes are very different."

The Global Perspective

Williams urges Israelis and the global Jewish diaspora not to succumb to despair, reminding them that the Western media bubble does not represent the entire planet.

Region / Population
Attitude Toward Israel & Jewish Stereotypes

The Western Media Bubble
Obsessive criticism, hyper-fixation on geopolitical faults, virtue signaling.

India & China (Over 2.8 Billion People)
Broadly supportive, deeply respectful of Jewish intelligence, indifferent to Western biases.

“Asians look up to Jews. You have a fantastic reputation among Asians, and we make up 60% of the bloody planet,” Williams emphasizes. “If you just take India and China alone, they don’t give a damn about Western stereotypes. You might be looking at your problems through a very small, Western lens.”

PART 6: Winning the Kinetic War, Losing the Media Battle

Despite his admiration for the country’s resilience, Williams leaves Israel with a sharp, urgent critique of its strategy. While the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) excel at kinetic, physical warfare, Williams believes the country is devastatingly outmatched in the digital arena.

The Need for a Social Media IDF

Countries like Qatar, Iran, Russia, and Turkey pour billions of dollars into digital infrastructure, funding sophisticated bot networks, media outlets like Al Jazeera, and university programs to shape Western public opinion against Israel and the West.

Israel’s response? Relying on organic, untrained creators to defend the nation out of pocket.

"You are losing the media war. Surely you need an IDF of media. You are complaining about a problem that you haven't invested in. Where is the training center? Do you just expect your citizens to get onto Instagram and win the battle without any training?"

The Proposal

Williams is currently in Israel attempting to secure venture capital to build a formal social media academy. His goal is to treat digital communication as a serious discipline:

Professional Training: Training young Israelis, diaspora Jews, and Western allies (including ex-Muslims and Arab Christians) in the mechanics of algorithms, short-form content creation (TikTok/Instagram), and narrative building.

Scalability: Moving away from informal, localized advocacy to a massive, funded institutional counter-offensive against anti-Western propaganda.

“Social media is a brutal game—only 0.01% succeed,” Williams notes. “We are smart people, and we have the money. There is no excuse. Don’t just complain about the media war; invest in the future of the kids who have to fight it.”

Conclusion: A Debt to the West

Ultimately, Ryan Williams’ defense of Israel is bound to a larger, historical gratitude toward Western civilization. He recalls the thousands of American and British soldiers who died to defend South Korea during the Korean War, and the Western interventions that allowed global hubs like Singapore and Hong Kong to flourish.

“The West saved Korea. Without them, I’d be speaking Japanese right now,” Williams says bluntly. “All Asians owe a debt to the West. And Israel is fundamentally a part of that Western matrix of freedom, science, and capability.”

Williams’ journey to Israel confirms his baseline philosophy: in a world increasingly threatened by radical ideologies and authoritarian regimes, the West cannot afford to let its single, democratic outpost in the Middle East fall. And to the comfortable, pajama-clad critics in the West who sit on their couches judging the morality of a nation under fire, Williams has only one message left:

Stand up, go there, see it for yourself—or stay quiet while the adults secure the future.