China's tightly controlled internet flooded with antisemitism following Hamas massacre

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan — Speaking to the U.S. Bar Association last week, Aaron Keyak, the State Department's deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, warned of the growth of antisemitism in China following Hamas' massacre of Israelis Oct. 7.

"There’s been an increase in the People’s Republic of China’s state media and online discourse of antisemitic tropes that Jews control the United States through deep U.S.-Israel ties, as well as control over banks, the media, and that they have influence over government leaders," Keyak said. 

"Conjecture that Jews control the U.S. government and U.S. wealth is an antisemitic falsehood intended to degrade trust in the United States, our democratic institutions and, ultimately, democracy around the globe." 

The statements from the administration will be welcomed by many who have been monitoring Chinese antisemitism, an already existing problem that has grown worse since the Hamas massacres Oct. 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza. 

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Most of the hatred expressed has been online. Reports show Chinese "netizens" openly mocking the parents of the half-Chinese, Israeli-born captive Noa Argamani, who was seen in a viral video looking terrified as she was kidnapped by Hamas. Argamani's Chinese-born mother has been targeted with strings of profanities after she asked Beijing to help secure her daughter's release.

Chinese web users frequently compare Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Holocaust, with Israel playing the role of the Nazis. YouTube is banned in China, but the most popular Chinese version of a video site, Bilibili, along with other social media platforms operated by TikTok owner ByteDance, including TouTiao and Xigua, is awash with pro-Hitler videos, memes, pro-Nazi content and antisemitic tropes. 

The Times of Israel reported in late 2023 that Steven Spielberg’s "Schindler’s List," previously a hit in China, had been "review-bombed" down from 9.7 to a 4.3 rating. One highly-rated comment from a reviewer in China asked, "Where is the Palestinian Schindler?" 

Noa Argamani, 26, is being held by Hamas somewhere in Gaza. (Courtesy: Bring Them Home Now)

As Israel’s war against Hamas heated up in October, Chinese search giants Alibaba and Baidu, for a time, made Israel disappear. The Jewish state could no longer be found on either site’s map apps. 

The chance that this removal of Israel "from the river to the sea" was due to a tech glitch is virtually zero. China's internet is the most policed on earth, and few observers believe this map incident was anything other than a childish gesture meant to bring a few moments of joy to pro-Hamas Chinese netizens.

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Meron Medzini, professor emeritus at the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91, has had a front-row seat to history, watching both the emergence of the State of Israel and the People’s Republic of China, a country he’s visited a dozen times. 

A popular Weibo top search query interface is displayed on a phone in Ganzi City, Sichuan Province, China, Dec. 31, 2021.  (Wang Jianfeng/Costfoto/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Medzini told Fox News Digital that the "recent antisemitic publications and other forms of [antisemitic] expression in China should be seen as an expression of anti-Americanism. The belief is that Jews have vast influence on American politics, media, academia, banking and finance and, thus, in fact, control America. It is easier to attack Jews than America." 

Medzini is the author of books on the history of Taiwan-Israel relations as well as Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust era.

Speaking to Fox News Digital from his office in Taipei, Ross Darrell Feingold, founding chairman of the Chabad Taipei Jewish Center in Taiwan and an analyst of Chinese foreign policy, explained that even if the CCP is not directly promoting antisemitic hate speech, up to now it has not required the platform operators to clamp down. 

"On my Chinese social media account, the antisemitic vitriol directed at me is astounding," Feingold said. "It includes the usual stereotypes such as Jews control global wealth and U.S. foreign policy, to more extreme comments such as references to Jews going up in smoke or are better off being turned into soap".

The flag of China is flown behind a pair of surveillance cameras outside the Central Government Offices in Hong Kong, China, July 7, 2020.   (Roy Liu/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

There is evidence that even the official Chinese news media have been given the green light to air antisemitic tropes. In his address to the U.S. Bar Association, SEAS Deputy Aaron Keyak noted, "For example, in an October 2023 program on ‘uncovering the Israel elements of U.S. elections in history,’ PRC state media (China’s central television) alleged that ‘Jews who represent 3% of the U.S. population control 70% of its wealth.'"

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The hate, however, runs deeper than old tropes. As the Gaza war continued into the end of 2023, Su Lin, a frequent contributor to Chinese state media and a senior research fellow at China’s most prestigious "private" think tank, the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), reportedly went as far as saying publicly, "Hamas was too gentle" or, in another translation, "Hamas went too soft on Israel."  

Feingold also says the CCP, to maintain tight control and prevent internal ethnic strife, would not tolerate similar vitriol on social media if it was directed at China’s Muslims, such as Uyghurs or the Hui ethnic group. 

This image made from undated bodycam video footage taken by a downed Hamas terrorist and released by Israel Defense Forces shows a Hamas terrorist walking around a residential neighborhood at an undisclosed location in southern Israel. (Israel Defense Forces via AP)

Medzini noted that China was once a sincere friend to the Jewish people and the State of Israel. 

"The father of modern China, Sun Yat Sen, supported Zionism and the return of Jews to Israel," he said. "Although Japan was an ally of Nazi Germany during WWII, in Japanese-occupied China, Jews were not persecuted, and as a result, some 30,000 Jews survived the war. Nationalist China was the first Asian nation to recognize Israel in March 1949, while Israel was among the first ten non-Communist nations to recognize the People's Republic of China in January 1950." 

Before the Israel-Hamas war started, Feingold published a commentary calling on the Biden-Harris administration to send the U.S. antisemitism ambassador to China. However, he told Fox News Digital, "Despite a few references recently in public remarks, I’m not optimistic that the Biden-Harris administration’s China engagement efforts will really include tackling antisemitism in China." 

Another country that seems concerned about the growing trend is Germany. Writing in Chinese, the German embassy posted a comment on Weibo, China’s version of X, formerly known as Twitter. 

Palestinian Hamas terrorists during a military show in the Bani Suheila district July 20, 2017, in Gaza City, Gaza. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

The translated tweet says, "Dear netizens, we need to emphasize the rules of the comment area again: We believe in the power of free speech and rational debate. Therefore, we allow some negative, critical and controversial comments to appear below our posts. … But all this is not without limitations. … We also want to make it clear that those who deliberately combine the Israeli flag with Nazi symbols in their profile pictures are either ignorant idiots or shameless bastards! Such accounts will be permanently blocked by us."

But stern comments from the German embassy have had little to no effect in reducing the vast amount of antisemitic content on Chinese social media platforms. Considering how tightly controlled China’s internet is, critics wonder if it’s fair to ask why the platform operators or Chinese government haven’t taken action.