China’s social media trends amidst the outbreak of war in Israel provide troubling insights into the initial sentiments of Chinese netizens, including but not limited to adding a concerning layer of antisemitic rhetoric being shared on a relatively wide scale.
On October 8, 2023, the Israeli Embassy's Weibo account shared a post regarding the abduction of Noa Argamani, a Beijing-born, 25-year-old engineering student from Ben-Gurion University. The post drew considerable attention from Chinese netizens mostly in a negative manner. Many of the comments and new posts accused Israel of attempting to manipulate public opinion to draw China into the conflict. Rather than showing sympathy for Noa’s tragic abduction on any sort of scale, an explosion of posts pointed out that due to China’s policy of not recognizing dual citizenship, Beijing was absolved of any responsibility to aid in her rescue efforts. Other netizens attempted to label Noa, who was attending the festival with her boyfriend, as an Israeli “combatant” by citing images from her Instagram posted in 2016 while performing her mandatory IDF service.
The popular discontent for Israel and disregard for Noa’s safety did not stop there.
Support for the terrorist organization, Hamas, as well as the justification of the mass murder of Jews was alarmingly prevalent throughout the comments of most of the related Weibo posts. Chinese netizens called for Hamas to continue launching rockets at Israel and expressed hopes that Hamas could “destroy Israel once and for all”. This sentiment was heavily intertwined with and reinforced by a disturbing mixture of antisemitic tropes, hate speech, sexual objectification, and references to the holocaust, with antisemitic symbolism like swastikas and references to Adolf Hitler.
The Chinese censors have not deleted or blocked these posts, while at the same time, posts telling the Israeli story are being blocked. The Chinese sentiments point to a coming decoupling between Israel and China. To Israel, Beijing is not a neutral country anymore, nor is it relevant to the Middle East’s future peace process.
China’s social media trends amidst the outbreak of war in Israel provide troubling insights into the initial sentiments of Chinese netizens, including but not limited to adding a concerning layer of antisemitic rhetoric being shared on a relatively wide scale.
On October 8, 2023, the Israeli Embassy's Weibo account shared a post regarding the abduction of Noa Argamani, a Beijing-born, 25-year-old engineering student from Ben-Gurion University. The post drew considerable attention from Chinese netizens mostly in a negative manner. Many of the comments and new posts accused Israel of attempting to manipulate public opinion to draw China into the conflict. Rather than showing sympathy for Noa’s tragic abduction on any sort of scale, an explosion of posts pointed out that due to China’s policy of not recognizing dual citizenship, Beijing was absolved of any responsibility to aid in her rescue efforts. Other netizens attempted to label Noa, who was attending the festival with her boyfriend, as an Israeli “combatant” by citing images from her Instagram posted in 2016 while performing her mandatory IDF service.
The popular discontent for Israel and disregard for Noa’s safety did not stop there.
Support for the terrorist organization, Hamas, as well as the justification of the mass murder of Jews was alarmingly prevalent throughout the comments of most of the related Weibo posts. Chinese netizens called for Hamas to continue launching rockets at Israel and expressed hopes that Hamas could “destroy Israel once and for all”. This sentiment was heavily intertwined with and reinforced by a disturbing mixture of antisemitic tropes, hate speech, sexual objectification, and references to the holocaust, with antisemitic symbolism like swastikas and references to Adolf Hitler.
The Chinese censors have not deleted or blocked these posts, while at the same time, posts telling the Israeli story are being blocked. The Chinese sentiments point to a coming decoupling between Israel and China. To Israel, Beijing is not a neutral country anymore, nor is it relevant to the Middle East’s future peace process.