Israel-Hamas War: In China’s eyes, Hamas is obviously not a terrorist group
Chinese government official remarks and state media propaganda don’t make any effort to attack Hamas for its act of terror. This, in turn, is having a knock-on effect on its social media where Israel is singled out by trolls
While the Israel-Palestine conflict has been a hotbed of contention in the modern era, the recent Hamas offensive is unprecedented. Some countries have condemned Hamas, some have sided with Hamas, while a third group has been neutral.
While many call China a neutral country, a close examination of the response in the Chinese language media has been anything but neutral.
The Official Chinese Response
The official response via a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) statement on October 8 voiced deep concern about the current heightened tension and escalation of violence between Palestine and Israel, and called on all parties concerned to maintain calm and restraint.
China’s UN Permanent Representative, Zhang Jun did not condemn the attacks, reiterated MOFA’s statement and added that the repeated crises are because the peace process has derailed, the foundation of the “two-state solution” has been eroded, and relevant UN resolutions have not been implemented.
Liu Zhongmin, Professor at the Institute of Middle East Studies, Shanghai International Studies University, was quoted by Guancha, a popular portal maintained by China’s Central Propaganda Department, as saying that the attack was Hamas’s desperate response to the marginalisation of the Palestinians and criticising the hubris of Israeli intelligence while blaming Netanyahu’s policies for demoralising the Israeli army.
An interview was published by Southern Daily, an authoritative platform of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, of Professor Ding Long and Researcher Niu Song from the Institute of Middle East Studies at SISU. They said that Israel has been attempting to annex some illegal Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip since last year, causing significant dissatisfaction among the Palestinians.
This statement is totally baseless as there are no Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip currently as all were dismantled and withdrawn in 2005. They further said that Israeli police and Palestinians have clashed repeatedly at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City. At the beginning of the year, Israeli Minister of National Security Ben Gvir entered Al-Aqsa Mosque Square under police protection.
This behaviour aroused strong dissatisfaction from the Palestinian side as the mosque is considered holy by them. The interview claimed this as the reason the operation by Hamas was launched and was also named after the mosque. There was not a single word condemning the attack but instead, the full interview was focussed on Israeli atrocities and the attempt by Hamas to change the status quo due to the US bringing Israel and Saudi Arabia closer.
Chinese Social Media Gets The Drift
On Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter there were many posts extremely hostile towards Israel. For example, there was one saying: “The world will never know peace as long as Jewish swine exist”. There were also posts discussing China’s standing on the side of “fairness and justice”( 公里正义) on the conflict, always supporting the Palestinians.
Some went to the extent of celebrating the kidnap of a Chinese Israeli by Hamas. Chinese government news portal China Net (中国网), a front for the CCP Propaganda department, alleged that Israel had used white phosphorus bombs, now #8 on Weibo’s trending topics, prompting Chinese netizens to compare Israel to the Nazis.
Also, on a close examination of all articles published, a majority of them do not mention Hamas or call it a terrorist organisation, the term used is either Palestine or groups in Palestine clashing with Israel. The other is the fact that the US and Israel relationship is ironclad and the CCTV official Weibo handle reposted an old video where the Chinese anchor explains why the US supports Israel no-questions-asked.
The reason trotted out is that “Jews represent a mere 3 percent of [US] population but control more than 70 percent of its wealth and is US”. Thus, they control both banknotes and votes and are the most powerful ethnic community in the US and due to its domestic compulsions, the US will always side with Israel whether it is right or wrong.
The common refrain in all articles is the same that it is because of Israelis sidelining the Palestine cause that this conflict has reached this stage and secondly, it will become bigger if the US gets involved and the two-state solution by the UN is not applied. Thus, the Chinese state has actually taken sides and neutrality is just a mask that it wants to maintain to keep on trying to be the peacemaker of the world.
