Since the Hamas terrorist attacks carried out against Israel in October 2023, the Chinese internet – which is heavily controlled by the communist regime led by Xi Jinping – has been flooded with anti-Semitic comments and materials.
An article published by the American newspaper The Washington Post on the 8th, he pointed out that several comments triggering hatred and false information about Jews are normally circulating on the networks of the Asian country, which lives under a large censorship apparatus that blocks any subject that is considered “sensitive” or contrary to the Beijing regime .
Aaron Keyak, deputy US representative for combating anti-Semitism, said in an interview with the American newspaper that the increase in hateful comments against Jews has the full support of the Xi regime.
“We know that the Chinese internet is not free, this is a conscious decision by the Chinese government to allow this type of rhetoric [ataques antissemitas] increase considerably,” he said.
For Keyak, what was observed after the October attacks against Israel “was a drastic change in social media within China”. According to him, “anti-Semitism has become more rampant, more free”.
“They [a China] see the spread of anti-Semitism as a tool to advance their national interest,” Keyak said, noting that “this is a problem for the United States and for anyone who cares about the well-being of Jews anywhere, because [o antissemitismo] spreads.”
In December 2023, when he was in Brazil, the American representative told the newspaper Newspaper that anti-Semitism was being used as a “diplomatic tool” by the Chinese regime.
“The biggest problem with using anti-Semitism as a diplomatic tool to advance your foreign policy goals is that Jews end up getting hurt in the end,” he declared.
Keyak's statement was rebuked by the Chinese communist dictatorship, which, through its embassy in Brazil, called the accusations “evil”. However, the dissemination of false material about Jews in the Asian country's controlled media is not something new.
In May 2021, a state broadcaster belonging to the Chinese regime broadcast a video on its X (formerly Twitter) account containing false information that Jews dominated “the financial sectors, the media and the internet” in the US and controlled opinion. of American society.
The material was broadcast in a context where Israel was carrying out operations in the Gaza Strip and was considered by the Israeli embassy in the Asian country as “blatant anti-Semitism expressed by an official Chinese media outlet”.
“The statements made in the video are racist and dangerous and should not be used by a self-respecting media outlet,” the Israeli embassy wrote on X at the time.
In the interview given to SheetKeyak recalled that this type of false information is often used in totalitarian countries.
“Strengthening the conspiracy theory that Jews control the financial system, the media, politicians, leads people to believe that there is no way to hold their governments accountable because they are controlled by an outside force. From the perspective of countries and individuals who don’t love democracy, this is attractive,” she said.
Yaqiu Wang, Freedom House's research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, said in an interview with Post that in China, “the government has created an environment where it is easy for anti-Semitic content to thrive” at this time.
A subject from Al Jazeera
published in November revealed some of the comments that are freely circulated on social networks that are controlled by the Xi regime.
The Qatari broadcaster found comments from people exalting the Nazi regime's Holocaust, where they wrote: “It's really Little Mustache's fault [Hitler]. If he had burned them all [os judeus]we wouldn't have so much of a problem”, to publications where it was stated that Jews had benefited from wars: “In European wars, you will see the shadow of Jews making money, like vultures”.
The state website Voice of America found in December that anti-Semitic attacks on the Chinese internet were still on the rise. On the profile of the Israeli embassy in the country, the website team found several hateful comments.
Despite this, the Israeli ambassador to China, Irit Ben-Abba Vitale, said in an interview with the website that the circulation of this type of content was beginning to be removed from the local internet.
According to information from the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post, relations between China and Israel have gone through ups and downs in recent times. Despite maintaining economic commitments to the Israelis, the Chinese have not specifically condemned Hamas for the October terrorist attacks nor classified it as a terrorist group or organization.
This decision occurred because the Beijing regime maintains strong diplomatic relations with Arab countries, according to the The Jerusalem Post. Relations between China and these countries are so strong that not even allegations that the Chinese regime was violating the human rights of the Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority living in the Xinjiang region, were condemned by the Arab League, which visited the site in June last year and denied that a genocide was taking place there.
The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, even justified at the time that China's actions in the region were part of the “combat against terrorism” and that they had “nothing to do with human rights violations”.
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