Antisemitism has sparked up around the world as Israel seeks to root out the Hamas terrorists long at their doorstep in the Gaza strip and China – seeking to diminish the U.S. and one of its primary allies – is going all-in.
The state-run media in China is blaming the U.S. for fomenting violence in the Middle East, deepening the conflict, while sharing antisemitic tropes about the malign influence of Jewish puppeteering in American politics, The New York Times reported.
China is pushing for a cease-fire in the Middle East, seeking to curb Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack – which it has refused to condemn – but China’s guise of being a peace broker is undone by its pushing antisemitism with increase volume of late, according to the report.
“The current situation is giving this fuel, and it is growing,” China’s University of Nottingham associate professor Mary Ainslie, an expert on antisemitism in China, told the Times.
A China Daily editorial Monday called the U.S. on “wrong side of history in Gaza,” suggesting “blindly backing Israel” is fomenting more violence.
Former Global Times editor Hu Xijin rejected Israel officials’ warnings against Hezbollah attempting to capitalize on Israel’s focus on Hamas.
“Oh, calm down, Israel,” Hu wrote on Chinese social media, the Times reported. “I’m worried you’ll wipe the Earth out of the solar system.”
A popular social media influencer in China with 2.9 million followers rejected talk Hamas is a “terrorist organization,” instead calling them a “resistance organization,” all while calling Israel’s airstrikes on Hamas acts of “terrorism.”
The posts and narratives are consistent with Chinese state positions and rarely does Chinese state media and social media influencers have the guts to divert from China’s controlling narratives, according to Israeli think tank the SIGNAL Group.
“If China felt that it was dangerous and problematic to allow antisemitic comments to flourish, the censors would stop it,” Executive Director Carice Witte told the Times.
The breaking from Israel in its war with Hamas is going to have lasting implications on diplomatic efforts between China and Israel, if not the U.S., according to Gedaliah Afterman of the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy and International Relations at Reichman University in Israel.
“This is likely to reduce Israel’s willingness to trust China as an ‘honest broker’ in the current war,” Afterman told the Times.
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Eric Mack | editorial.mack@newsmax.com
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/antisemitism-china-online/2023/10/29/id/1140127
