Israel war: Netanyahu should abandon China over Hamas conflict betrayal

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Benjamin Netanyahu, Aviv Kochavi
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, hold press conference following the killing of a senior Islamic Jihad commander in Gaza by Israel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty) Oded Balilty/AP

Israel war: Netanyahu should abandon China over Hamas conflict betrayal

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A nation learns who its friends are when a great crisis arrives.

Confronting Hamas in response to the terrorist group’s massacre of 900 Israelis, the Jewish state is rightly learning that the United States remains its best friend. The U.S. is providing global diplomatic leadership, intelligence, and arms to Israel’s military and an aircraft carrier to deter the Lebanese Hezbollah. Beijing’s approach is a little different. China is aping pro-Hamas talking points and absurd calls for an immediate ceasefire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should take heed of the dichotomy between what Washington and Beijing are saying and doing for his nation. Put simply, China is showing it is no friend of the Israeli people. Netanyahu should thus finally recognize U.S. concerns over Israeli tech support for the People’s Liberation Army.

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The divergence in how the U.S. and China are responding to this Israeli 9/11-style tragedy could hardly be more stark. The U.S. rapidly arranged an unprecedented joint statement with its European allies asserting Israel’s unequivocal right to defend itself. In contrast, China immediately called “on relevant parties to remain calm, exercise restraint, and immediately end the hostilities to protect civilians and avoid further deterioration of the situation.”

Chinese state media have gone further, openly gloating that the “conflict will exert a heavy blow to Washington’s Middle East policies, including disrupting the new U.S.-backed India-Middle East trade route, a plan aimed at challenging China.” Beijing’s Global Times outlet even defended Hamas’s baby-beheading adventurism, claiming that “the current U.S. plan of pushing more Arabic countries to reconcile with Israel has pushed Palestine to the corner, and Hamas’s attack is its last-ditch effort.” The newspaper decried U.S. support for Israel, suggesting, “Neither providing weapons nor sending an aircraft carrier group can bring peace to the region, not to mention manipulating public opinion.” Topping things off, columnist Hu Xijin attacked the U.S. for its support of Israel, decrying how “the casualty figures of Palestinian civilians have been much greater than that of Israel over the years. It is precisely the U.S. practice of taking sides and selectively condemning the other side that sends the wrong signals to the region …”

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Netanyahu must take heed of this rhetoric. It shows China most certainly is not the “match made in heaven” for Israel that Netanyahu posited in 2017. Were Netanyahu to continue on his present China tech engagement path following this war, he wouldn’t simply be betraying the United States over its righteous support (Israeli tech support for China directly threatens American service personnel amid concerns over a coming war with China), he would be ignoring the base reality of where China stands.

Xi Jinping’s regime plainly does not stand where any close partner of Israel should. Namely, shoulder to shoulder. Or, put another way, with an aircraft carrier loaded for bear off the Lebanese coast.

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