Conflating Israel, Jews, and Judaism

An observer of Chinese views will notice a widespread tendency to conflate Israel, Jews, and Judaism. In popular discourse, Israel and Jews are more or less synonymous. This is not much different from the West, where the anti-Israeli presentation of the Gaza war by official and social media is regularly causing verbal and physical violence against local Jews. Chinese officials, intellectuals, and news providers are generally aware of the difference between Israel and World Jewry. Officials acknowledge the distinction when it suits them, for example, when they insist that their criticism of Israel has no antisemitic connotation. They often fail to draw the distinction when it does not suit them, for instance, when expecting Israel’s gratitude for Shanghai’s providing a haven for Jewish refugees in 1940-45, before Israel even existed.

A genuine Chinese understanding of Jewish history developed in the early 20th century. Sun Yat-sen, the first provisional president of the Republic of China, later called the “father of modern China,” compared the tragic fate of the Jews to that of the Chinese. In 1920, he wrote to N.E.B. Ezra, head of the Shanghai Zionist Association, that he supported Zionism, the “movement to restore your wonderful and historic nation which has contributed so much to the civilization of the world.”³ The original views of China’s Communists were not very different. A couple of weeks after Israel’s declaration of independence (May 14,1948), while the Chinese Civil War was still raging, the Communist Party’s People’s Daily welcomed Israel’s establishment with an empathy not always found in the West: “The wandering life of the Jews for two millennia was ended. The State of Israel was established in the Middle East.”⁴ These Chinese perspectives viewed Jewish history as continuous and regarded Israel as the logical extension of a longstanding narrative. The perceived unity of Jews and Israel was in line with many Jewish and all Zionist views, but it was also inspired by how the Chinese saw their own several thousand-year-old history. Even in 2008, Henan University historian Prof. Zhang Qianhong published a History of Israel, which begins with the tale of Abraham, the biblical ancestor migrating from Mesopotamia to Canaan, later Israel. Her book ends with the Middle Eastern peace negotiations of the early 21st century.

China’s tensions with the West, to which Israel belongs, have upended this positive perspective on the continuity between Jewish history and the State of Israel. The link between the two still exists, but it is now often seen in a negative light – and its explanation is antisemitic. With the creation of Israel, “the Western powers literally stabbed a dagger in the heart of the Arab world,”⁵ a typical, quasi-official but false historical statement. It ignores that in 1948, it was the Soviet bloc that provided decisive military and political support for Israel, not the West, apart from American President Truman’s quick and critical recognition of the new state. Hence, if Israel is presented as a colonialist white settler outpost, as can be found in China today, the Jewish people writ large can be incriminated for Israel’s actions. The original source of linking the two negatively was Soviet, especially Stalinist antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism. Soviet hostility was directed at Israel, the United States, its allies, and the large Jewish community in the USSR suspected of supporting Israel. The new Chinese version also targets Israel and the United States but lacks a local Jewish minority as a focus. Instead, it targets American Jewry and aligns with the antisemitism and anti-Americanism of the Muslim world. So much for the changing historical background of the popular conflation of Israel, Jews and Judaism.⁶ This conflation often means that positive or negative relations with Israel translate into positive or negative relations with the Jews – not the few in China today, but the entirety of world Jewry.