China is waging a proxy war against Israel | Opinion

In early November, a letter purportedly written by Osama bin Laden went viral on the social media app TikTok, with American children making videos praising the letter’s contents and confessing that it had made them rethink their fundamental beliefs. The letter is highly anti-Semitic and advocates Islamic terrorism against Israel and the West. The outcry against the social media platform for spreading the letter was so intense that TikTok eventually removed all content, including the video.

Of course, it’s no surprise that Osama bin Laden became popular among young Americans on TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, a company controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and which is hell-bent on destroying the United States and its allies, especially Israel.

According to Hamas, when Chinese diplomat Wang Kedjian met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar in March, he said, “The Hamas movement is part of the Palestinian national organization and China is keen to engage with Hamas.” Around the same time, a video was widely circulated on Chinese social media in which a TV host boasted that “TikTok has brought a great victory to Palestine.”

Cooperation between the Chinese Communist Party and Hamas goes both ways. Hamas’ top leader, Khaled Meshal, said in an Arabic-language television interview in early November that Hamas “seeks cooperation with the superpowers China and Russia,” adding that China should take inspiration from Hamas’ invasion of Israel in its plans to conquer Taiwan.

What interest does Hamas have in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? The answer is simple: Israel and Taiwan are both considered allies and proxies of the United States.

This marks a shift for China. Diplomatic ties between Israel and China date back more than 30 years, and 25 cooperation agreements worth an estimated $2 billion were signed during Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to China in 2017. At the time, Netanyahu expressed interest in joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative and asked China to help with infrastructure projects in Israel.

But in December 2023, Israeli companies reported that Chinese suppliers were delaying shipments of needed materials and critical components, and required a variety of new formats and regulations, and in January 2024, China’s state-owned shipping giant COSCO announced it would stop trading in and with Israel.

Then they completely changed their positions.

According to Guermantes Lailali, a scholar at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University and former U.S. Air Force officer, the IDF found a large amount of recently acquired Chinese-made advanced military equipment and weapons technology in Gaza. Chinese tunnel warfare experts helped Hamas design and build the tunnels. Lailali also told me that two tunnel engineers from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army were found by the IDF. This means that China provided significant assistance to Hamas in building a large network of tunnels under the Gaza Strip. (The engineers returned to China under pressure from Israel.)

Then at the end of April, the Chinese Communist Party invited the leaders of Hamas and Fatah in an effort to promote unity among Palestinian factions.

Why has the Chinese Communist Party, which has extensive trade ties with Israel and has traditionally maintained a neutral stance in the Middle East, suddenly become so vehemently opposed to the Jewish state?

In March 2021, Iran and the Chinese Communist Party signed a 25-year cooperation agreement that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described as “permanent and strategic.” According to the agreement, China will invest in Iran’s energy, infrastructure, shipping and ports. In return, Iran will provide regular supplies of crude oil at a discount.

Since then, China and Iran have strengthened cooperation in all these areas, and one of Iran’s key strategic objectives – and that of its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah – is the destruction of Israel (the “Little Devil”) and ultimately the United States (the “Great Devil”).

And this is where China’s and Iran’s goals overlap. In May 2019, Xi Jinping declared a “People’s War” against the United States. The PLA’s website explains that “A People’s War is a total war whose strategy and tactics require the full mobilization of political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, military and other power resources, and the integrated use of diverse forms of struggle and methods of combat.”

China and Iran have a comprehensive strategic partnership and share the goal of defeating the U.S. This is why China is advancing Iran’s geopolitical goals in the Middle East.

It is time for Israel and the United States to acknowledge the truth: the Chinese Communist Party is an enemy of America and an enemy of the State of Israel.

Rabbi Pesach Wolitzki is the host of Eyes On Israel on the Real America’s Voice network, co-host of the Shoulder to Shoulder podcast, and executive director of Israel365action.com.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.