Israel's Newest Security Threat – Is the US Next? - by Robert Williams for the Gatestone Institute - 08.05.24
- Michael Julien
- May 8, 2024
- 4 min read
"The Chinese are imposing a kind of sanction on us. They don't officially declare it, but they are delaying shipments to Israel.... In electronic products, there are tens of thousands of components, but if even one component doesn't arrive, we cannot deliver the product." — Unnamed senior figure in a factory, Ynet, December 24, 2023.
Also immensely disturbing is that "massive" amounts of advanced Chinese military equipment were found in Gaza by the IDF during its military operations there.
"If you set up systems with technology for critical infrastructure, like electricity, energy, water, transport, these are tied to one another. One can be used to bring the other down." — Harel Manshari, Head of Cyber at the Holon Institute of Technology and research fellow at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism, JNS, January 8, 2024.
China recently hosted delegations from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority's ruling Fatah faction, ostensibly to facilitate "unity" between the two factions, all the while pretending to be a neutral mediator interested in peace in the region.
Is the enemy, already inside Israel's gates, also inside the US?
Immensely disturbing is that "massive" amounts of advanced Chinese military equipment were found in Gaza by the IDF during its military operations there.
The Iranian-orchestrated Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 -- which resulted in mass rapes, the murders of 1,200 men, women, children and infants; taking more than 250 hostages and firing thousands of rockets at Israeli towns and cities -- has shown that China, which Israel might have thought was an ally, turned out to be, sadly, more of an enemy.
China refused to condemn Hamas and its terrorist invasion of Israel, choosing instead to condemn Israel just a week after the massacre and before Israel had even launched its ground operation in the Gaza Strip.
Israel's actions in Gaza have gone "beyond the scope of self-defense" and the Israeli government must "cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza," China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on October 15.
In contrast to earlier conflicts between Hamas and Israel, China has now openly embraced Hamas.
"... China's firm positions towards the Palestinian issue and its standing by the just demands of the Palestinian people for freedom, independence, and statehood.... Hamas is part of the Palestinian national fabric and China is keen on relations with it."
At the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, where South Africa and other countries accused Israel of "genocide," the Chinese Foreign Ministry's legal advisor, Ma Xinmin, defended Hamas:
"Palestinian people's use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state is an inalienable right... Armed struggle in this context [the October 7 massacre] is distinguished from acts of terrorism."
China has used Chinese-owned TikTok to incite and brainwash Western children, teenagers and young adults to hate Israel and to "free Palestine." The less-than-charming results can be seen on university campuses and even high schools across the US. One Chinese social media video bragged that "TikTok Has Won Big for Palestine." China is evidently seeking to undermine the United States as much -- or more -- as it is seeking to undermine Israel.
According to Michael Singh, head of The Washington Institute for Near East Polic:
"This approach is a stark departure from Beijing's past impassivity toward Middle East conflicts in which Chinese officials had usually sought to avoid entanglement. Rather, it reflects the government's new inclination to use far-flung conflicts as opportunities to undermine the United States."
"China has changed its attitude to Israel dramatically and it's gone totally towards a position of anti-Semitism now," an unnamed Israeli intelligence source said.
"Before October 7, the Chinese loved Israel and Jews and felt a sense of admiration [for them] but now, the media coverage hasn't even shown the Chinese public what happened on October 7, only the aftermath. The regime is brainwashing the public in a totally different direction and it's happening at an unprecedented pace."
"It's just pure maths," said Tuvia Gering, a specialist in China at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies.
"There's only one tiny Israel, and there's only one country that supports it, which is the US. Well, you have today 57 members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and that's a lot of votes in the [UN] General Assembly."
Israel has had diplomatic ties with China for more than three decades, and has cultivated increasingly close-knit ties with it for the past decade, especially after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2017 visit to China which led to 25 cooperation agreements, including in science, technology, transport, food and agriculture, at an estimated value of $2 billion. At that time, Netanyahu expressed interest in joining China's Belt and Road Initiative and invited China to build infrastructure projects in Israel.
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Robert Williams is a researcher based in the United States.
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Pictured: A Hamas weapons cache discovered by Israel Defense Force soldiers in the Gaza Strip, in December 2023. (Image source: IDF)
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